Full disclosure

If anyone that reads this blog thinks I have any poker wisdom at all, please reexamine your belief system. I was so tickled with my last post that I finally signed up for 2+2 and posted it there. They mostly tore me to shreds.

They made some good points:

1.) Playing A9o here sucks. I mostly agree with them. In 90,000 hands of (winning) limit hold'em with 6 or more players , I've only limped into a pot with A9o when dealt it in the SB 20% of the time. I'm guessing that almost all of that is in an unraised pot. I'd try to figure out how much lower that % is against a raise, but my pokertracker database is getting very very slow. I do think there were exceptional circumstances that made it much better here that it normally would be. But it is hard to conclude that it pushed it past the +/- EV line. I cringed as I made the call, which is usually something that happens on the river, not preflop...

2.) My river play sucks. No doubt.

They made some other points about the play of the hand. Although I disagree with some of them, they are worth checking out. Always good to hear different thoughts about hands.

Several times I was personally insulted. So intense is adamstewart's hatred of me, I conclude he either was my victim in this hand, or he is convinced I killed his mother.

The entire thread is available here. If that link doesn't work, it is posted in the Texas Hold'em General Forum, user name "adspar" post titled "Odd play in a big pot, funny reaction."

I still like my flop bet, which is why I was so excited about the hand in the first place. So excited that I misplayed the river, then misplayed my first 2+2 post. Luckily I don't really care what they think about me, as long as they help me learn.

Fun and games

I'm not a big fan of FullTilt but they have a 50% rebuy bonus going, and I'm trying to branch out, so I bought back into that site. I instantly remembered how they never have many hold'em games going and the bonuses take forever to earn back. I doubt I'll play there enough to earn all $300 within the 60 day window. But while I was sitting in either a $2/4 or $3/6 shorthanded game, an interesting hand arose, and hilarity ensued. (Non-poker people may or may not agree on the hilariousness.)

Another reason Full Tilt sucks is that they don't offer hand histories, so I'm recounting this hand from memory...

Preflop - 6 handed

• me in the small blind: A♥9♠

• 2 donkeys limp. Button raises. I call cause I could easily have the best hand. Big Blind 3-bets. All call.

Flop - 5 players, 15 small bets in the pot

• board: 8♥ 6♥ 3♣

• I bet out because I figure the BB will raise his overpair, which will probably get everyone else to fold. That cleans up my Ace outs and maybe gets overcards out if pairing my 9 would be good, and I have the backdoor flush draw and a possible weak straight draw. The pot is huge, so its worth taking this shot.

• I bet, big blind raises, all fold to me and I call.
  

• Sweet, exactly what I wanted.

Turn - 2 players, 9.5 big bets in the pot.

• board: T♥

• Now I picked up the flush draw, plus an inside straight draw. I figure I have 9 outs to the nut flush, plus 3 Aces and 3 sevens for probable winners. That's 15 outs of the 46 unseen cards, so I have an easy call getting 10.5 to 1 from the pot.

• I check, big blind bets, I call.

River - 2 players, 11.5 big bets in the pot

• board: A♦

• Sweet, I rivered top pair. No point betting it, but I probably win.

• I check, big blind bets, I call.
• I drag the 13.5 big bet pot after big blind shows 9♦9♣

This hand and the hand I posted earlier with the pocket aces are good examples of how big pots force you to change your strategy considerably. Note that in this pot I bet the flop with what I knew was the worst hand, but in the other hand I checked the flop with what I knew was probably the best hand. I think the circumstances of each hand made this backwards strategy appropriate.

Anyway, I mentioned that hilarity ensued. I very rarely engage my opponents in chat, in fact I usually turn the chat feature off, but this was too good to pass up. The big blind was pretty upset about losing a big pot on the last card, so he begins berating me for what he thinks is bad play. It always pisses me off when I see players criticize their opponents' play.

Big Blind says - "That was absolutely horrible"

He is insulting me, telling me my play was horrible. Now keep in mind that I'm pretty proud of myself because I used some fairly sophisticated moves that paid off. Also note that this guy went a little overboard with his middle pocket pair. If he hadn't 3bet preflop I probably would have just check-folded on the flop, although maybe someone else would have sucked out on him. But that is the nature of middle pocket pairs. The point is that he brought this "bad beat" upon himself.

I reply - "Yeah betting the river there didn't make too much sense for you. Horrible."

I turn it around on him. He probably shouldn't have bet the river. Lots of opponents will call until the river with a hand containing an ace or a ten, so checking probably would have been a better play.

Big blind says - "Well I figured your hand hit the flop... you know, since you called a reraise."

Actually I called a raise not a reraise, but who's keeping track. So he is now defending his river bet, saying he figured my hand was made on the flop and that the Ace didn't help me. I love how it started out with him criticizing me, and now he's flopping around trying to defend his own play.

I reply: "Horrible figuring."

Outzinged, he pretty much gives up on the "horrible' line of conversation, but is still fuming mad.

Big blind says: "I love it when idiots fall a$$ backwards into a hand and then act like they played it right"

This is so replete with irony:

1. At no point in our little conversation did I ever defend my play to him. I didn't act like I played it right; I simply questioned his play, but he's too mad and/or stupid to realize that.

2. Second, as I've already mentioned, with the possible exception of my preflop call, I think I did play my hand right, but he's not a good enough player to realize that. And I didn't fall into that hand, I had to work hard for it! But to his ignorant a$, my play looked idiotic. (By the way, I find it hilarious when angry players find ways around the poker software's auto censoring: a$, fu_ck you, chit, etc. Where there's a will, there's a way.)

3. If you believe your opponent is such a bad player, why would you tell him? Criticism is going to piss a person off, which usually has one of two effects - it is either going to make them play better, or it will make them leave. Do you really want your opponents to get better? Do you really want a horrible player to leave your game?

I was content to simply enjoy irony #1 without further comment. As for irony #2, I felt no need to defend my play. I didn't want to educate him any more than I had already done by questioning his river bet, which I was only willing to do because I knew I wouldn't be playing in this game much longer. On that note, I figured I'd teach him irony lesson #3.

I responded: "You are mean. I don't want to play with you any more. Your meanness is driving this bad player away from your game."

And I left the table.

Huge Pot

Hints:
UTG = Under the Gun = first person to act after the blinds
UTGB= Under the Gun B = 2nd person to act after the blinds
MP = Middle Position
Button = last person to act on all betting rounds

Party Poker 10/20 Hold'em (9 handed) converter

Preflop:
UTG raises, UTGB 3-bets, MP1 calls, 1 fold, MP3 calls, 1 fold, Button caps, 2 folds, UTG calls, UTGB calls, MP1 calls, MP3 calls.


Flop:
21.50 SB = $215 in the pot. 5 players for 4 bets each.

8♦, 3♥, 2♣

UTG checks, UTGB checks, MP1 checks, MP3 checks, Button bets, UTG calls, UTGB calls, MP1 calls, MP3 calls.


Turn:
13.25 BB = $265 in the pot. 5 players still in.

2♠

UTG bets, UTGB raises, MP1 calls, MP3 folds, Button folds, UTG calls.

River:
19.25 BB = $385 in the pot. 3 players still in.

K♦

UTG checks, UTGB bets, MP1 calls, UTG folds.

Final Pot: 21.25 BB = $425



Results and commentary in white below (highlight to read):

UTGB has Ah As (two pair, aces and twos).

MP1 has 7c 7s (two pair, sevens and twos).

Outcome: UTGB wins 21.25 BB.

I had the Aces. After 5 people see a capped flop, my priority is maximizing my chance to win the pot, as opposed to maximizing the size of the pot. I didn't raise the flop because it would have still been right for almost any hand to call me. Nobody would have folded and everyone would have odds to call if I bet the turn. By not raising, I induced UTG to bet out on the turn, giving me the chance to raise it to $40 and force 2 people out, and forcing the guy with 77 to make an incorrect call.

This was the biggest pot I've won in a long time.

Its been a long day

I've written before about how I got to be playing the Party Poker $3/6 hold'em game. The key point is that over a couple months I averaged $90/hour of winnings by playing 4 tables at once in that game. While I knew that my "true" winrate over a larger number of hands wouldn't end up that high, I still fancied myself quite a success in that game.

When I found myself playing poker full time, I figured I'd start with that game as my bread-and-butter and go from there. I started to get frustrated with that game, made fun of my opponents, wallowed in some introspection, and eventually decided to try $5/10 instead.

So that gets us to yesterday. If you asked me 2 days ago, I'd tell you my main game was playing 4 tables of Party $5/10 full-handed tables. But after losing 73 big bets ($726.50) in 2 hours late Thursday/early Friday, I started to wonder if that was really my best choice of game. I've played almost 30,000 hands, and I'm winning a mere 0.37BB/100 hands, which translates to less than $10 per hour. That's no way to pay my bills while building a bankroll. So something has to change. What should I change?

Here are the variables: hold'em, cash game, limit, $5/10, full-handed, Party Poker, 4-tabling.

1. Hold'em: While I enjoy dabbling in Omaha and a little 2-7 Triple Draw, I'm sticking with Hold'em. This is the hottest game in the country, and if I can't make it as a hold'em player right now, I need to stop playing poker.

2. Cash Games: In my experience so far, I suck at tournaments. I'm good at the 1 table quick ones, but that's about it. I don't have what it takes to win these big online multitable tournaments. I'll still enter a few of them for fun, but I'm sticking with cash games mostly.

3. Limit: From time to time I've given serious consideration to moving to the no-limit side of the world. Everyone sees tournaments on TV and wants to go all-in. I have to imagine there are tons and tons of awful players playing no-limit these days. My first poker experiences were playing no-limit games with my buddies in college. I regularly destroyed those games, so I have to believe I've got some no-limit talent.

But I'm not comfortable making this switch yet. There are still lots of awful limit players all over the place, and I have a lot more experience with the limit game. II feel better playing no-limit when I can see my opponent. Limit hold'em is a lot more mechanical, and I can pick up very good reads based on betting patterns without seeing the players. So for now I'm sticking with limit.

4. $5/10: To pay the bills and try to build my bankroll to move up in limits, I need to be playing at least $5/10 most of the time. I'll play $3/6 if it is shorthanded or heads-up because I can get a lot more hands in, but for the most part I need to be looking to play higher.

5. Full-handed: This one is tricky. I've written a bit about the short-handed vs full-handed struggle. Playing poker live and at limits below $5/10 online I've always been very strong at shorthanded play. But that damn Party $5/10 6-max game is my master. I just can't beat it for some reason. I crush the $3/6 5-max on Paradise. So I'm not sure what my problem is with shorthanded play. I know I'd like to be able to play short, because you get in so many more hands. I don't know what to do here. This leads us to...

6. Party Poker: Party is my favorite online cardroom, and you've seen me pimping it from time to time. There are tons and tons of bad players, more than any other site. But since I've decided so far that I want to play $5/10 and higher, and I'd like the option of playing shorthanded (and winning), I have to look at the results. And the stats say that I'm just not winning enough in Party's limit hold'em games, full or short at $5/10 or higher.

So I'm starting to sniff out games at other sites, and I have noticed very distinct differences in playing styles at different sites. It is entirely possible that my playing style and strengths just don't work well against the games at Party. I'm a marginal winner at Party, but maybe I could be a big winner somewhere else.

Why would this be? A factor is that 6-max tables at Party are available most only at $1/2, $5/10, and $10/20. Those games are very popular, as are the $3/6 and $15/30 full-handed games. I have to think that the play in the full-handed games at the $5/10 and $10/20 levels is heavily influenced in some way by the abundance of short-handed games. I don't know exactly how it is influenced, but I definitely notice a difference in play when I go to other sites with different limit offerings.

Luckily, I'm not writing a thesis, so I don't have to figure out all the reasons. And I'm not trying to prove my skills to anyone, so I don't feel like I have to beat whatever game I play. I just have to make money. So I'm going to try to find games I can beat, which might mean less playing at Party, at least at these limits.

7. 4-tabling: I've been 4-tabling $5/10 because I 4-tabled $3/6. But as I was moving up from $1/2 to $2/4 to $3/6 I dropped some tables when I moved up, then gradually added them back. I never did that for $5/10. I probably should have.

I'm playing on a 17" monitor, so there is overlap for more than 2 tables at once. Maybe being able to see all of the players on every table all the time would help. I'll get a 21" monitor once I'm sure that 4-tabling is profitable for me.

But I read this guy's story. And some analysis of my results suggests that I do a lot better with fewer tables. So I'm going to try playing 2 tables for a while instead of 4.

So there it is. I decided to stick with limit hold'em cash games, and try playing 2 tables on various sites at $5/10 to $10/20 limits. In the 24 hours since the disastrous session that made me rethink things, I've won $1200 with my new approach. Its been a long day.

The Royal

In a $5/10 game yesterday I was dealt

A♠T♠

There was a limper, then a late position raise. I called the raise from the big blind, as did the limper, and the 3 of us saw the flop came down

Q♠K♠8♣

We both check to the raiser, who bets. I call with my strong draw, and the other guy calls. The turn comes

8♥

and everyone checks. The river delivers my

J♠

and I bet my Royal Flush. The preflop limper raises me, and then the preflop raiser 3-bets! I gladly cap with the mortal nuts. At this point the 1st guy gives up, and the preflop raiser calls me with

A♣T♣

I guess he thought I'd cap the river on a paired, flushable board with 2 pair. I won the $144 pot.

That is the 3rd royal flush I've hit at Party Poker in since December (all 3 were spades), and at least the 6th in my life. I seem to be a royal flush luckbox. I've often told the story of my first royal flush, but for those who have never heard it, here it is.



In college we used to run up to Atlantic City to play poker at the Taj. It was about a 3 hour drive, so we'd usually leave in the early afternoon when we woke up, get there early evening, play all night and then drive back. Occasionally we'd sleep in our car. Paying for a room never really crossed our minds.

You're supposed to be 21 to gamble in a casino there, and while they usually check IDs at the other table games, nobody ever IDed us in the poker room. I probably played a dozen casino sessions before my 21st birthday.

Driving home from one of these trips, The Biz told me "if you ever get dealt a royal flush you'll have to fold it." He went on to explain that he saw someone at his table hit one, and that the casino gives you a free dinner as a prize. They put the free dinner on your comp card, which you have to show valid ID to receive. So since I didn't have a comp card and didn't have a fake ID, I'd get busted if I made a royal. "Whatever, dude."

A few days later, The Biz and I were back in elegant AC. We were degenerates. A few hours into my $2/4 hold'em session I was dealt

J♠K♠

(Always spades) I limped in along with 29 other people. No fold'em hold'em, baby. The flop came

A♠T♠A♣

At this point I remember the warning, and I hope that there is a bet and a raise to me so I can reasonably fold my draw. But somehow all 29 people checked, and some brick hit the turn. I was thinking, "alright whatever moron was slowplaying their ace-three offsuit can go ahead and bet it now so I can fold." But somehow, everyone checked again. This was unheard of. So the river delivers my glorious nemesis, the bitch of spades.

Q♠

Now I start hoping that everyone checks again, so I can bet and then everyone will fold. But of course some jackass immediately bets. Everyone folds to me and I have a decision to make. Can I really fold a royal flush? How can I do that? I don't remember making the decision, I just remember my hand throwing out enough chips for a raise.

Please just fold, jackass! Of course he calls, and now I need to figure out what I'm going to do.

On the outside I proudly show my cards, while on the inside I'm thinking SHIT SHIT SHIT!

The dealer looks at my 2 spades, and the 3 spades on the board and announces "King-high flush."

YES YES YES! I like the sound of that. She doesn't notice it is a royal!

Then the rest of the table erupts in applause. "No, that's a ROYAL FLUSH!!! WOOHOOO!!!!"

SHIT SHIT SHIT!

The dealer calls for the floorperson, who I know will ask take my nonexistent comp card to give me my free dinner. When I tell the floorperson I don't have a comp card, she'll say "oh that's no problem, just come with me and we'll get you set up with one." Then she'll find out I'm not 21 and I'll go to jail and get raped. (I realize now they probably would have just told me to cash out and leave. But at the time it was scary.)

While the floorperson is making her way over, I turn to the woman next to me and ask what is going on. "Oh they'll give you a free dinner on your comp card."

"Oh, where is the dinner?" SHIT SHIT SHIT! She tells me it is to some restaurant upstairs. "Oh don't really like that place... plus I don't have a comp card..." SHIT SHIT SHIT!

"Well why don't you use my card?" she offers. YES YES YES! "Although all the floorpeople know me. They probably won't let you use it." SHIT SHIT SHIT!

Then she turns and sees that the floorperson coming over is the one guy that actually doesn't know her. She hands me her card, and I realize that there's no way I'll get away with giving a card with a woman's name on it. SHIT SHIT SHIT!

But then I look down at her card. Her name is Pat. YES YES YES!! Hooray for androgynous names!! I give the dude Pat's card, and he returns it 5 minutes later without incident. Pat got her dinner, and I got away with it. The End.


By the way, check out Luke's blog. Funny story about playing poker with Cameron Diaz.

(Needlessly Profane) Blatherings

• Poker is a sick disgusting game. Anyone that plays poker is sick and disgusting. I went into tonight riding a sick disgusting losing streak. Within an hour I was down another $500. Sick. Disgusting. I was starting to think about things like my sick resume and disgusting rush hour traffic. That was around 1am. Now its 4am and I finished the session with $41 more than I started with. What the fuck is wrong with me at the beggining of my poker sessions? I can't win then to save my life, but I swear I'm a fucking world championship caliber player starting in my 3rd hour at the table. Obviously I'm exaggerating a little bit. Sick and disgusting...long run....EV...variance...full house...big blind...omaha...serenity now. SERENITY NOW!
  

• One thing that I've learned in my first few days with the sweet Yahoo Music Unlimited thing is that Lyle Lovett is awesome. Before this endorsement sets off a wave of sarcastic comments, make sure you've actually listened to some of his stuff before you bash him. I know he's an ugly dude and superficially its hard to see how he ever got Julia Roberts, but he's fucking talented. Even if his stuff isn't your style, you're going to have a hard time not respecting him if you are any kind of music lover.

• I saw Star Wars tonight. I hadn't even seen all of the first trilogy before college, but I became a fan. I've enjoyed the last two new movies, and was looking forward to this one. For me, Star Wars is great for creating a fascinating far-away exotic galaxy that we can all relate to this world. The plotlines are intricate, but they rely on simple themes: good vs evil, destiny, father vs son, etc. The battles are usually very well done, and Jedis are just really cool. So that's what I like about Star Wars. But these movies consistently deliver awful acting and cheesy dialog. Why can't we have a fucking decent actor be a Skywalker? Sigh.

• Next week I get to take the big splint off and just tape my pinky to the ring finger. Looking forward to that. My left wrist is so sore from being locked in place by the splint. Aww, poor me. Sigh.
  

• I count 4 F-bombs in these blatherings. Chill out?
  

I need a break?

I've decided to take a few days off from poker.

Since March 26, I've only had 3 days where I haven't played at all. My results have been awful the last 2 weeks, and yesterday was my 2nd worst day in these 2 months. I'm hoping some time away from the tables will help me clear my head to come back focused and fresh. I'm on a $2,000 downswing, which is a lot for me, so I'm taking desperate measures here.

I don't know how much I can attribute my poor results to this, but I've been on real world time for these last two weeks, going to bed around 1am and getting up around 9am. I always thought the games were best between midnight and 6am, so I've been sleeping through the easy games and trying to grind it out in the tough daytime games. After this coming weekend I'm planning to get back on vampire time.

Medical Update:
I have a followup appointment tomorrow morning to make sure my finger is healing properly. I'm hoping that he'll set me up with a different splint that I can take on an off.

JUAN

Juan Dixon to testify before Congress.

Yahoo! Music Unlimited

This is the best thing ever. Unlimited music for $5/month.

Online Poker Screen Names 2

When you sign up to play poker at an online casino, you pick a screen name that other players see when you sit at a table. Here are some names I've played against. Players in red are losers in games I've played; green are winners.

(Online Poker Screen Names 1)

Sexual/Vulgarity:

• CugeHock - This must be Jon Reremy's alias
• RATDICK - Now that I think of it, Jon Reremy kinda looks like a rat.
• Stu Pidasso - This must be Ben Dover's alias
• BenDovr - Hmm, maybe not
• bend_over - I guess we dropped the formality
• TapalotaPuss - Sounds like a Bond girl. Um, actually maybe a Bond guy. No, that doesn't make sense either. Let's just move on.

Weird:

• KhanhAir - This is one of two things. Best case is that this guy's name is Khanh, or he's somehow affiliated with something named Khanh. In that case, he decided to come up with a play on words and related his name to the name of the movie "Con Air." That's like when my friend Erm had the IM screenname "ErmNHammer." I understand the pun and all, but couldn't you have come up with something cooler than baking soda or a crappy movie? (Yes, Con Air is on my honorary mention Badass Movies list, but I'm trying to make a point.) So that's the "good" case. The worse case is that this guy is in no way associated with the name Khanh at all, and he just thought he'd come up with an alternate spelling for Con Air. That would be really really weird.

• CMSyouup - "I'm on some team called CMS. We'll mess you up." NOBODY ON PARTY POKER KNOWS WHAT CMS IS! NOBODY CARES!! YOU CAN'T TALK SHIT WHEN NOBODY KNOWS WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT!!! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?

• CubstoWSin03 - Its early 2003, and you are sitting in your Chicago apartment. You're a big Cubs fan, and are thinking about baseball while you sign up to play Party Poker. Excited about your team's chances for the upcoming season, you decide to choose a name to predict success for your team. But you are a complete rampant idiot. The Cubs didn't make the World Series in 2003, and now its 2005 and you are still using this name. Also, if you are going to make big, bold and erroneous predictions about your team, why do you only pick them to get to the World Series? Why not pick them to win it? You should go throw yourself under the A-train.

• PsychoErectus -This is just a great name. Bravo. With a mind capable of producing this name, its no wonder he's won $347.50 in the 68 hands I've seen him play.
  

• weed4zeke -On the other hand, this moron has won $294.50 in 70 hands, proving that poker is for morons.
  

Gross:

• mymomishot - Oh I know she is.

Funny References:

• deadhooker - I'll assume this is a reference to a great scene from "Dirty Work."

• rikjaymesbch - Weird spelling of "I'm Rick James, bitch!" By the way, Dave Chappelle disappeared after signing a $50 million contract, and then turned up in a mental hospital in South Africa. I'm not making that up.

• SunTzu68 - I only include this because it leads me to the conclusion that someone, somewhere has probably combined Sun Tzu and 69. All's fair in love and war?

• fishbulbman - Homer Simpson is the fishbulbman.

Once upon a time...

Long, long, long, long ago, Handsome Prince was sitting in his house in Montgomery Village, chatting on AOL Instant Messenger with his old girlfriend, Sexy Ex-y. The details of the conversation, long since forgotten, are unimportant. What is important is that at some point in the fateful conversation, Sexy Ex-y took a picture of her breast and used IM's direct connect feature to send the image to the handsome prince. It was creative high-tech flashing. Good clean amusement between consenting dorks with a digital camera and high-speed internet.

Many moons passed, and Handsome Prince drifted away from Sexy Ex-y, and the picture was long forgotten. However, unbeknownst to Handsome Prince, evidence of the exchange was retained, in the downloaded pictures cache of his AOL IM files...

A new young lady, Beautiful Princess, entered his life. Handsome Prince and Beautiful Princess were very happy together. Their days were filled with joy, and nights with passion, until one day, he stumbled across the long, long forgotten picture while she was sitting right behind him. Did I mention that I had long since forgotten about this picture? Oops I mean, the Handsome Prince had long since forgotten about the picture, and it meant nothing to him.

Upon seeing the very meaningless image, the Beautiful Princess shouts "Oooh, busted!" and walks away. Except she did it in a way where it was hard to tell if she was pissed or amused. Handsome Prince, being quite smitten with Beautiful Princess, immediately recognized the deliciously precarious nature of the situation. His cool exterior belied the panic alarms sounding inside his head:

Crap, she just saw Sexy Ex-y's breast!! Why is that picture there?!! DAMMIT WHY DOES IM SAVE PICTURES!! Crap, I hope she realizes that the picture was auto-saved a long time ago. Oh god I hope she doesn't think I saved it intentionally. Actually, that breast could be anyone's, right? You can't see the face!! Whew! Oh no, shit, or maybe she thinks girls just send me pictures of their breast. Maybe she thinks some girl is trying to seduce me and I haven't told her about it. Oh god, now she thinks I'm either hiding pictures of old girlfriends or pictures of random would-be seductresses from her. Wait, what did Beautiful Princess mean by her comment? Maybe she thought it was just some random breast from somewhere on the internet! The internet has lots of breasts, and maybe she doesn't realize it came from IM. Surely the Beautiful Princess wouldn't care if I just had a random breast picture from the internet. Maybe "busted" was just sarcastic, yeah!! Right? Well now its been too long and I haven't said anything to explain. If I say something now, it will just look like I'm making up a story. Dammit, we've been watching all those Sopranos episode where all the men cheat on their wives, and we just watched that scene in "A Perfect Murder" where Michael Douglas comes up with a beautiful lie right out of his ass. I don't want it to look like I'm full of shit. No, I better just not say anything now. She probably thinks its just a random boob, right?? I'm FUCKED. Actually this is all kinda funny...

Later that day, the Beautiful Princess finally asked the Handsome Prince about the picture, apparently after hours and hour of mulling it over in her mind. The Handsome Prince had been so worried about what he should do, he never stopped to think that if he just told the Beautiful Princess the truth, she wouldn't care at all. And then the wonderful Beautiful Princess was so concerned about not wanting the Handsome Prince to think she distrusted him like a stereotypical jealous girlfriend that she agonized about the situation for hours before finally asking him. In the end, she didn't care, and they both wasted a lot of energy worrying about nothing, all because the Handsome Prince is a moron.

The End.

The 4 morals to this story:
1.) Tell the truth, you stupid Handsome Prince. She's not going to care. Don't put her through needless agony. What the hell is wrong with you?
2.) Don't create the appearance that you keep some kind of secret archives of sexual souvenirs from your ex. Oh, and don't call her "Sexy Ex-y." Call her "Plain Jane" or "Inferior Ingrid" or something like that. What the hell is wrong with you?
3.) If you are an internet poker player like the Handsome Prince, don't assume that someone in the real world will think that taking suspiciously long before acting might be a bluff. Usually when people take a long time before betting, its cause they have a monster hand. But she knows you're too smart for that, so your girlfriend might raise you on the river because she thinks your delay means you missed your overcards. So either bet right out, or have the monster. What the hell am I even talking about?
4.) Always use thinly-veiled fairy tales on your blog as a way to make peace with your girlfriend while simultaneously amusing your audience. That way everyone is happy.


Finally, since I realize all you dirtballs are going to ask to see that picture, here it is.

Not satisfied

I'm not happy with my poker results.

After dropping almost $500 today in a 3 hour session (ugh), I've played 18,000 hands since moving to $5/10, and I'm only winning 1.06 BB/100 hands. In the 66,000 hands I've played while 4-tabling $3/6 and $5/10, my BB/100 is at 1.35. That is about $21.25 per hour of poker winning. Blegh.

While I do feel like my game is improving in certain ways, its not improving enough. I'm stagnating. I realized that aside from browsing through the 2+2 forums and reading Cardplayer articles, I haven't invested enough time in poker education lately. So I just ordered these books:

• Small Stakes Hold 'em: Winning Big With Expert Play, Ed Miller
• Doyle Brunson's Super System II
• Hold'Em Poker for Advanced Players, David Sklansky & Mason Malmuth

I would really like to get my winrate at $5/10 up to 2.0 BB/100, or at least over 1.5 for a meaningful number of hands before I make my next move up in limits. I see plenty of room for improvement in my game, and I can't be lazy about plugging leaks.

Grant Hill

Did anyone see Grant Hill in the ABC studios last night? High comedy. He was so over-the-top, like some caricature of someone trying poorly to be a broadcaster. It was as if he was trying to make every single word he excruciatingly deliberately articulated seem like the most important thought in the history of time. His performance was actually quite reminiscent of the man sitting next to him, Bill Walton, except with different vocal patterns. The two even exchanged some mutual man-love to start the broadcast, something to the effect of

Hill: "Thank you ... for having me. ................................................................... And what a .......................... tremendous ...................... honor.... to be sitting ........................ here with a ............... top-50 Hall of Famer ....................... Mr. Bill Walton."

Walton: "NAY, GRANT, IT IS I WHO AM HONORED TO BE HERE WITH YOU ON THIS LIFE-CHANGING DAY! THAT YOU WOULD DEIGN TO GRACE US WITH YOUR MAGNIFICENT PRESENCE IS A POWERFULLY HUMBLING EXPERIENCE, ONE THAT I SHALL SURELY TREASURE TO THE END OF MY DAYS!!"

I can only hope that Hill finds a job in TV when he retires as a player. I'd ask that he always be paired with Walton, but that would be too much to hope for. And my head might explode.

back

• i'm back home.
• my finger is put back together properly. i've got a very uncomfortable cast/splint over an extremely sore hand but am otherwise in good shape. no pins were needed. 6+ weeks recovery projection.
• there wont be much capitalization on here until i can use my left hand.
• i need to put in a lot of poker hours of my best game (5/10 full) over the next few weeks to make up for inactivity and poor results in other games. luckily i wont be playing sports for a while so i have some extra time.
• planning has begun for the 2nd annual celebration of hobbits and calories.

more gimp-type bah

-so much for being on normal person time. i fell asleep on the couch at the start of the pistons/pacers game (8pm) and woke up around the start of the suns/mavs (11pm). now its 3am and i'm downloading pokerstars software over my parents 56k modem.

-nobody can stop amare, and the mavs get nothing offensively from dampier or bradley, so why bother playing them? why not just throw out dirk and 4 guards and see if you can confuse the suns by playing their exact same style? i'd put henderson in the game before dampier or bradley. nobody on the mavs attacks the rim except stackhouse and occassionally dirk. damn the suns are good.

-i cant eat or drink anything between 7am and 4pm. sweet.

knock me out, fix me up

surgery tomorrow, 4pm.

MY gimp-type updates

*commence 1.5 handed gimp-typing*

MY hand:

at the parent's home in bel air, got that doctor's appointment at 1pm. hand doesnt really hurt much right now, but gonna hurt like a mofo when he tries to set it again. not fun. looking at the palm-up view of my hand pictures, you can kinda see where the bottom fragment of my finger bone was pushing up from below the knuckle. that is what he needs to get back into place.

MY sleep:

friday - 7:30am to 5pm
saturday - 9am to 7pm
sunday - 11am to 2pm (woke up for mother's day party)
sunday/monday - 10:30pm to 6:30am

suddenly i'm back on regular people time. ACK!

MY poker:

awful day saturday night/sunday morning. gave back all my profits from tuesday thru friday. i just suck at party 6max for some reason. i do so well with paradise 5max and heads up, and stars 6max. i always considered shorthanded play a strength in my game, but party tells me otherwise. but i might be starting to figure it out the differences in the games. we'll see if i adjust.

occassional dalliances nonwithstanding, my main game now is party $5/10 full handed, 4 tables. 2 possible progressions from here, within the party limit hold'em world:

1.) $5/10 full --> $5/10 6max --> $10/20 6max
2.) $5/10 full --> $10/20 full --> $15/30 full

not sure which way i want to go. shorthanded i'd get more hands and more rakeback which would make up for the smaller stakes, assuming i can handle 4 tables shorthanded. but i suck at party shorthanded so far. and you hear a lot about party $15/30 full, but never much about $10/20 full. so i dont know what to expect at that level. living off my playing bankroll obviously slows bankroll growth, so for now i probably oughta just bare down on my main game and try to put in a lot of hours.

one other consideration would be investing in more monitor space and adding more tables. i think i could comfortably handle at least 6 full tables, maybe 8.

MY awesomeness:

fully intact. projected to continue steady expansion for foreseeable future.



*cease 1.5 handed gimp-typing*

Serious Inconvenience

It is very much broken, just above the knuckle. The bottom piece of the bone is still out of position, despite several extremely painful attempts by the doctor to yank it back into place. He concluded that the swelling is too severe now to move it, and I go back Monday to try again. He told me the anesthesia will be even less effective then. If he can't get it set right, we'll have to resort to surgery and put pins in to hold it in place.

Aside from the bitch of paying the $500 deductible on the temporary insurance policy I bought (good thing I got one though, since the total bill could go a lot higher), and the frustration of being sidelined from my basketball, tennis, and soccer teams for at least 6 weeks, this will also likely decrease my blog output, since one-handed typing sucks.

While waiting for my next post, enjoy these pictures I took before I headed to the doctor.


Note the fatness, purplehood, and the 30 degree rotation.

Yummy!

Ouch

I dislocated my finger playing ball tonight. It still seemed messed up after I popped it back in, so I hope nothing is broken. Hopefully it is just the massive swelling, but it seems like there is something goofy going on at the 3rd knuckle. Apparently 3rd knuckle dislocations are less common and more serious than the middle knuckle ones. I'll go get it X-rayed tomorrow at my dad's office. Luckily its my most worthless finger, the left pinky, so after the pain and swelling go down I shouldnt be seriously inconvenienced.

Online Poker Screen Names

When you sign up to play poker at an online casino, you pick a screen name that other players see when you sit at a table. Here are some names I've played against. Players in red are losers in games I've played; green are winners.


Sexual/Vulgarity:

• SexMachine69 - 95% chance this is some 15 year old dork with his mom's credit card.
• IButtSexU - Classy!
• fxxckyouall - that isn't my censoring effort, that was his brilliant idea
• LkmyNuts - In poker, the "nuts" are the best possible hand. Such clever double entendre!
• AAshole - Your starting cards in hold'em are called your "hole cards." Starting with 2 aces is the best possible starting hand. Such clever double entendre!

Weird:

• HeroinAbuser - Who thinks of this why they sign up to play poker? Weird.
• intheloo - Why would you claim to be in the bathroom you British weirdo?
• Kirk_Cameron - I didn't know this guy still had fans. Maybe this is is the actual actor from Growing Pains...
• 401k - Dude must really love pre-tax retirement savings.
• ImFrankZappa - No you aren't.
• DonCorleaone - Um, you spelled it wrong.

Gross:

• MrBrownfolks - I assume this is supposed to be racist.
• ShesGotWood - That female has an erection. Lovely.
• DogsGoneWild - These dogs are willing and able to do everything! It’s real, raw and uncensored! No rules, no owners, and of course, no collars!
• ILOVEMUNG - I'm not sure if I know what mung is, but it sounds gross.
• SerialRakist - The "rake" is the money that the casino takes from each pot as their fee for hosting the game. Apparently giving yourself a name that sounds like "serial rapist" is cool. Wow.
• WitchPoo - What can I say?

Sleep

For as much as I obsess about sleep, I'm surprised I haven't written pages and pages about it on here. I give heavy consideration to the sleep implications of anything I considering doing. I rank time spent sleeping with someone (literally sleeping with someone, no euphemism intended) as the ultimate in "quality time." If I like talking to you, chances are I've often bored you with conversations about my sleep. I hate my alarm clock more than Weezer fans love shitty music, and Weezer fans obviously LOVE shitty music.

Sleep is on my mind right now because my already bizarre sleep schedule is about to get weirder.

Saturday I woke up around 3pm for a tennis match after going to sleep at 10am. 5 hours. Sunday I woke up at 4pm after going to bed around 7am. 9 hours.

Now in spite of the poor night sleep on Saturday, you would probably think I'd feel well rested on Sunday afternoon. But you'd be very wrong. By 10pm I was seriously dragging, so I took a nap from 11pm to 2:30am. Now its about 6:30am on Monday morning and I'm sitting here eating a McDonald's sausage and egg biscuit and wondering when I'll be able go to sleep again after such a delightful nap.

While it is unconventional, being awake all night is convenient for me right now, because that is when I think the poker games are easiest. Any obligations I have (tennis, soccer, basketball teams) are usually in the early evening, so waking up in time for those hasn't been a problem. I do miss the Junkies though, who are on the air from 11am to 2pm.

I've always believed that one or both of the following are true about me:

A.) I require more sleep than most people, and keep some kind of cumulative sleep deficit record. 9 hours of sleep wasn't enough on Sunday because I only had 5 from the night before, and averaging 7 hours just isn't going to cut it for me. When I was working at GE, I would average about 7 hours of sleep on work nights, and then would routinely sleep for 11 or 12 hours on Friday and Saturday nights. I've also had times where I only slept 2 or 3 hours one night, and then slept for 10 or 12 hours the next 2 nights in a row. I think I tend to average out to about 9 hours per night over any given length of time, which is probaly 1 or 2 hours more than most people.

B.) My body's natural rhythm isn't a 24 hour day. I think I'd probably be more comfortable with a schedule that is more like 10 hours of sleep and then 18 hours awake. Alas, the earth rotates on its axis once every 24 hours, so that is the schedule that almost every other living being on the planet uses. I'm always being oppressed by tyrannical systems.

Switching it up a bit

I reorganized the right sidebar. Instead of all the archives by date, I went to more concise monthly archives and then singled out some of my favorite posts. Also made a few minor updates to the movie rankings.

Fascinating.

By the way, lately I usually sleep from 7:30am to 3:30pm, give or take an hour.

links

A quick funny.

Got the link from here, which has passed this as my favorite blog.

Notes

Some poker notes

• With last weekend's rebuy bonus at PartyPoker, I decided it was a good time to move from $3/6 to $5/10. I've always been very conservative about moving up in limits, so even though I've put in some time at this limit previously, this jump was a big deal for me. I had a good first weekend there, partially confirming my theory that the bonus would cause an infusion of loose money. It was a good way to ease the transition.
• The last few days I've felt like I've hit another wave of very tough beats. It seems like all my big pairs and flopped sets get cracked, and I'm not hitting any draws.
• I'm really having a tough time playing my AK, AQ, KQ type hands. Lately it seems like either I raise and everyone folds, or I get a couple calls and miss. I'm having a tough time playing the hand when I miss the flop, especially because people call flop bets with almost anything. When I bet, I always seem to get check-raised, and when I check I always seem to let a weaker hand catch a card to beat me. But I think I've been getting away from rule #3:

3.) Assume your opponents are morons unless you have overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Act accordingly. This means that 99% of the actions you are faced with are pretty straight-forward. You can't bluff a calling station, and you can't check-raise someone who is afraid of their shadow. Bluff sparingly. Bet for value. Don't get fancy, jackass.

• I'm doing much much better dealing with this tough little stretch. I've managed not to get as emotionally frustrated, and most importantly, I've been able to keep plugging away and putting in more hours, hours where I'm still playing well. I keep making adjustments in my game, and I'm feeling pretty confident in spite of a little bad luck.
• 21 of the 29 hours I've played in the last 6 days have been at $5/10, good for 5,293 hands and a win rate of 0.9 BB per 100 hands, which works out to about $22/hour. My VP$IP is under 13%, which means I'm being very conservative about my starting hands, more conservative than I've ever been in full-handed games. My overall aggression factor is at 1.82, which is as aggressive as I've ever played in full-handed games. Only my river aggression factor is below 1.5, which I think I think I'm ok with, since when there are no more cards coming I'm not using aggression to protect made hands any more, and I don't run into too many situations where my opponents are likely to fold a better hand than mine.
• Last week (I track my weeks Wednesday through Tuesday), I made an effort to put in more hours, and got in 40 hours last week and averaged about $18.75/hour. Kind of like a crappy full-time job.

NBA Notes

• Ok, when I picked the Dallas Mavericks to win the NBA title, I might have been getting carried away a little bit. They have a rookie head coach, their point guards have very limited experience, and they still don't have much offensive post presence. But I still think that they are a very dangerous team. Dirk had the best season of his career, and Michael Finley still is a very good player. Jason Terry, Jerry Stackhouse, Josh Howard, Eric Dampier and the rest of the supporting cast are fitting their roles well and the Mavs actually play some defense now. But T-Mac is off his ass and it looks likely that Houston will win the series, in spite of the Mavs stealing a game in Houston tonight. If Dallas loses, I just hope that my boy Mark Cuban doesn't tear the team apart again. After another tumultuous offseason, they pretty much stood pat during the season, making only the excellent acquisition of Keith Van Horn. This is a great nucleus that he should give a few seasons to grow into their potential.
• How fun would a Rockets-Suns series be? I say that the Rockets are likely to win their series now because I really like Houston's team, especially their backcourt. Bob Sura, Jon Barry and David Wesley are a great collection of veteran guards to play with McGrady and Yao. Suddenly Yao is playing with some aggression, and T-Mac is being a leader and playing excellent defense. Matching that team up against the Suns small-ball squad would be very very interesting.
• My predictions suck, which is why I don't bet sports. I love watching and analyzing, which is why I still make predictions. But I don't take too much pride in correct predictions or feel too bad about misses, cause its all a crapshoot to me, because I don't watch or read enough to really have a good idea what is going on. The media seems to think they always have to make bold predictions, which I guess is fine. But I'd rather hear them discuss strategic analysis.
• Another thing that media always does that drives me crazy is when they feel the need to establish the importance of a playoff game. They say "this is a must-win game!" These are the fucking playoffs, every game is important. You want to win every game you play. They asked Kenyon Martin if splitting 2 games in San Antonio was a "successful road trip" and he got all pissed off at the question, and rightfully so. Umm, the one they lost was a failure and the one they won was a success. What the hell is a "successful roadtrip." I know what a successful game is, and what a successful series is. Stop trying to invent more artificial subsets of basketball! And then you get segments on ESPN where the experts try to tell me about the importance of each game in a 7 game series. THEY ARE ALL IMPORTANT, YOU STUPID ASSHOLES!
• I've never liked Jermaine O'Neal as a player or a person. He is a talented player, and when he has time to plan his words in advance, he usually says good things and seems like a good guy. But I think he's a dumb player and a punk. I'll always remember his absurdly stupid foul on Kobe Bryant as Kobe was shooting a desperation shot falling out of bounds as the clock expired that ruined what should have been MJ's game winning shot in his last All Star game. Watching him in the Detroit brawl earlier this year, and in the scuffle with Antoine Walker last night, he really comes off as a jackass who is always looking for an excuse to hit someone. And he recently made comments that the NBA's proposed 20 year old age limit for players is motivated by racism. While it is true that more black men than others will be affected by such a rule, even disproportionately to the ratio of black men to others in the league (the one good point Scoop Jackson made in an otherwise worthless commentary on this issue), it is ridiculous to suggest David Stern and the team owners would adopt it for racist reasons. I don't know if an age limit is in the league's best interests, but I am sure that the league's best interests, and thus their own personal financial interests, are all they care about. And if they adopt it, how would an age limit even hurt black men? Sure, there are some 18 year olds who are ready for the league, but unless they suffer a career-ending injury in those 2 years, they'll still get their payday. And for every preps-to-pros superstar, there have got to be many more guys who declared for the draft and lost their chance to get a free college education that could have improved their lives. It is at least a reasonable argument that by encouraging 2 extra years of maturation and education before they are eligible for the league, in the long run you'd be helping more black men than you hurt. The opposite could also be reasonably argued. Maybe an age limit would hurt more players than it helps, I don't know. But if it is adopted, it won't be because the man is trying to keep 'em down. God knows black people have faced and continue to face unfair discrimination, but playing the race card on this issue and accusing the owners and commissioner of a league that has made millionaires out of thousands of young black men is grossly irresponsible and classless.
• Speaking of NBA players who came in right out of high school, Jermaine O'Neal noted that those guys are some of the biggest stars in the league. Lebron, KG, Jermaine, Amare, Kobe, T-Mac. These guys are the faces of the NBA. But I think it is worth pointing out that the superstars that win the titles are college players. Shaq, Duncan, Jordan, Pippen, David Robinson, Hakeem. Yeah, Kobe has his rings, but this year is proving that those were Shaq's teams more than Kobe's. This might change over the next decade, but so far the way to build a winning team has been with college players, not the high school guys.

Other Notes

• Happy 50th birthday to my Mommy.
  
• Happy 81st birthday to my Grandfather

Reality

Its been a month since my last day of work. In 135 hours of poker play since then, I've made enough money to cover my expenses. Barely. And I made more money from bonuses and rakeback than I did from poker winnings.

If this is the best I can do, I won't be doing this for long.

But I'm willing to call this month an "adjustment period," be glad I made any money at all, and see if I can improve my results over the next month. I've still got a 6 month expense cushion so I'm not afraid to fail. If nothing else, I've bought myself a few months of freedom and a cool story.

But I don't think I will fail. I've probably learned more about the game in the last month than I have in several years combined. I'm making adjustments in my game and in my lifestyle that have already begun to yield positive results. And I've had months in the past where I made more money playing far fewer hours and at lower stakes, so I know I can do better.

Stop offering me credit

I get at least a dozen credit offers every week. Its pretty annoying, because I go through and open each one and tear it up because I'm paranoid enough about identity theft that I actually think its worth the effort. I guess this is part of the deal when you buy a house, although my real estate agent didn't mention it.

I find it especially annoying when I get offers for products I already have, which happens amazingly frequently. I get bombarded by pounds and pounds of mail for months, and staunchly resist their wares. Finally when I can't take it any more I break down and accept their offering, conceding victory to the evil credit card company, and they don't even acknowledge the defeat. I guess its not worth the bank's time to cross me off their solicitation list when I sign up. "Hello sir, we'd like to offer you (another) Amazon.com Visa card!"

The irony in all this is that if they knew that I quit my job, they probably wouldn't see me as such a valuable customer. Its hard to lend to someone with no verifiable income, although maybe my home equity is more valuable to them than my employment status.

I hate Mondays

Oh wait, there's no such thing as Mondays

What is life like when you don't have a job?

This month's Party Poker 20% rebuy bonus was capped at $100. Whats up with that? The last 2 months it has been $200. I guess we're pretty spoiled to be complaining that they only give a free $100 every month.

But I don't have a job. Another free $100 would be nice.

So tonight I had just finished playing the 700 raked hands needed to earn the $100 bonus and was more interested in watching the NBA playoff game between the Sonics and Kings than continuing with the lackluster session. Seduced by a recent deluge of propaganda about the lavish decadence of a hot bath, I decided to drag my TV over to the bathroom door, plugged the tub drain and let the hot water run.

It was lovely for about 5 minutes. Then I realized I was lying in a tepid pool of my own filth with my head 3 feet from my toilet bowl and the game was a blowout with halftime approaching. So the big experiment with pampering myself was fairly short-lived


Name that movie:

Dinah! Where's my Jimmy?

That oughta teach him

I've been increasingly annoyed by my PartyPoker opponents' growing tendency to not raise preflop with AA or KK. I think that they are misapplying a no-limit concept to the limit game. In no-limit, it is sometimes a good move to just call the blind in early position with a big hand in hopes that someone will raise you from behind, and then you get to put in a massive reraise. But in fixed limit games, especially games where you are unlikely to see the same opponents ever again, I think that anything other than raising with these hands is horrible poker.

Really, I'm glad that my opponents are grossly misplaying their hands, but the deceptive nature of this move has cost me a few bets recently. So that, plus my general disdain for mindless trendy idiots has me pretty worked up about this issue. Tonight I got some revenge on one of these assholes.

In a $5/10 Hold'em game on Party, "asshole" called my $5 big blind in early position.

Asshole: K♠K♣

Everyone folded to me in the big blind, and I checked.

Me: A♣ 3♠

I would have folded if he had raised. Instead, I saw a free flop with $12 in the pot.

Flop ($12): 9♥, 7♣, Q♦

I check because I have nothing, and the asshole checks because he's an asshole. I would have folded if he had bet, but instead we saw a free turn card.

Turn ($12): A♦

Now I have a pair of Aces but no kicker. I check because the pot is small and I won't know what to do if I get raised, but also because he'd be likely to bet a lot of hands worse than mine at this point, which is what happens. Asshole bets $10 because he's an asshole and I call it.

River ($32): 6♠

I check for the same reasons, he bets again for the same reason, and I call and win the $49.50 pot (net of the $2.50 rake) with my pair of Aces.

Lets review my opponent's four decisions this hand.

Preflop
Call, instead of raising and winning the blinds uncontested

Flop
Check, instead of betting and winning the pot

Turn
Bet at a tiny pot with the worst hand

River
Bet at a small pot with the worst hand



Yup, he misplayed every single action. Seriously, you should sign up for Party Poker.

Party Poker

If you ever decide to sign up for Party Poker, my favorite online poker room by far, I'd appreciate if you signed up through me by clicking the banner on the right side column or using bonus code "adspar" at signup. You get a 20% bonus on your first real money deposit, access to the easiest poker games in the history of time, and you help finance this blog you love so much.

Jesus loves you.

This is it

yup, 2 months

More randoms

• There is some ginormous Chinese guy who wants to be the next Yao. This is a regulation basketball. Wow. Freak shows are awesome.
  
• I kept hearing what I thought was George Clooney's voice doing Budweiser commercials. I was wondering how much they'd have to pay him to do that. Turns out it is him, and he is getting £1m, which is almost $2 million. I am all in favor of elite actors doing commercials, like Brad Pitt doing Heineken and Robert De Niro's awesome American Express commercial. I find it hilarious that Russell Crow is opposed to this. What does he care if his colleagues want to make an easy buck?
• Saranac's Adirondack Amber would have been much better with my silly salmon.
• Tonight is Reggie Miller's last regular season homegame. While I hated him for most of his career, as I've become a more general NBA fan in the last few years I've grown to like him. He's definitely always been a polarizing figure, but you have to respect what he's done in 18 seasons with the same team. One of the greatest shooters and clutch players of all time, I don't really understand why he is retiring. He's still got game, and the Pacers could make a deep run in the playoffs next year with Artest back.
• I'm playing in Iggy's satellite on Sunday. WSOP $1500 event entry to the winner.
• It's not that I'm lazy. It's that I just don't care.

You = chump. Good times.

Haven't written anything in a while. I don't have much to say, but here's what is going on.

I just finished up my financially best week of poker so far (I keep track of my weeks from Wednesday to Tuesday), but I'm not playing enough hours. So I decided I'd take today off, and then play my ass off for the next 6 days.

But Erm, who decided to devote his 2 week recovery from back surgery to online poker, keeps making money in tournaments. So, inspired by his success, I decided to enter a $50+5 Pot Limit hold'em tournament on PokerStars. I ended up busting out 28th out of 178 after almost 2 hours. I needed to hit 18th to make the money, but I won my buy-in back in a NL cash game I played on the side.

As an amusing anecdote, Erm originally hurt his back in college when I made his 6'8" lurchy ass sit in the middle back seat of Heath's tiny Saturn for the ride from College Park to the Baltimore Arena for a Terps basketball game. He whined that I should let him have the front seat because he's too big for the back, but I had called shotgun (2 other guys called "not bitch") and I sure wasn't backing down. When we got to the game, painfully gimpy Erm got picked to shoot a half-court shot for some prize. He awkwardly chucked a weak airball with the form and strength of an 11 year old girl. I felt much worse in the second half sitting next to the pathetic airball guy than I do now about the fact that 6 years later, he's under the knife. Good times.

After busting out the tournament, I was going to revert to my original plan to take the rest of the day off, but Erm talked me into a $20+2 sit'n go on Paradise, which I won. So I played for 3 hours today and won $80. Good times.

Last night around 2am, I had a craving for a cold beer, but I didn't have any. So after I finished that tournament, I ran to pick up a couple 6 packs. As I'm paying for them, the dude behind the counter gets this excited look and asks "have you seen that new punk undercover magazine?!" or something like that. "Fat Mike is working on it. It JUST came out!"

"Oh, cool man. Later." Yeah... why is he telling me this? Then I realized that I was wearing a T-shirt that says "pastepunk.com" and shaved my head last week.

I didn't have the heart to tell him that I bought the shirt to support a guy I knew in college who ran that website, and that I have no clue who "Fat Mike" is. Maybe before the rare occassions that I leave the house, I should check a mirror to see if I look like a guy who got out of bed at 1pm and played online poker all day. Good times.

In conclusion, Samuel Adams Double Bock is good, but doesn't really go well with leftover broiled salmon and potatoes and writing a boring blog entry. But you're the chump who just read the boring blog entry. Chump.

I got this email.

Dear Adspar

Your site has been added to our new *quality* poker links page, which can be found at www.Gutshot.co.uk/poker-links. We would be grateful if you could you reciprocate this, and link back to www.Gutshot.co.uk. As you’re probably aware, a link exchange is beneficial to both sites and will help us both become more accessible to poker players.

www.Gutshot.co.uk is home to the Gutshot Poker Collective, the largest online poker collective in the world with over 12,000 members. As well as our feature rich website and active forum, we also run the busiest poker club in Europe with over 900 players through our doors each week. We also provide ground breaking coverage of the WSOP main event each year and this year will be no different as TEAM Gutshot hit Vegas on mass.

Kind regards,

Danny.


Hmmm. I went to their site and looked around for about 30 seconds. It looks ok. Then I clicked on the links section, and I don't see any link to my site. Am I missing something?

turning around a bit

Since I realized how much crap had seeped into my game and put my new rules into place, I've played about 5,000 hands with over 3BB won per 100 hands. Spring cleaning pays off? I hope it lasts.

I Alone Cannot Stop the D

I thought of another musical post while running today.

I worked with a guy at GE who loves music, but I think he had been under the impression that there hadn't been any good music made in the last 40 years. So I put together a mix CD with a sampling of good music from my lifetime.

As I was narrowing it down to the 80 minutes of music I could fit onto a single disc, my last cut was between Live's I Alone and Tenancious D's Tribute. I went all artsy and picked I Alone, and burned the CD. Then I realized I'd made a terrible mistake. No way a 2nd song from Throwing Copper would have more marginal utility than the hilarity of the D.

The name of the compilation was a no-brainer. Here is the final version.



I Alone Cannot Stop the D

1. Sublime - What I Got (Acoustic version)
2. U2 - Pride (In The Name of Love)
3. R.E.M. - Man on the Moon
4. Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
5. Rage Against the Machine - Sleep Now in the Fire
6. Counting Crows - Rain King
7. Dave Matthews Band - The Best of What's Around (Live at Red Rocks version)
8. Bela Fleck and the Flecktones - Big Country
9. Kelly Bell Band - Homegrown
10. Metallica - The Unforgiven
11. Tenacious D - Tribute
12. Pearl Jam - Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town
13. Stevie Ray Vaughan - Couldn't Stand the Weather
14. Barenaked Ladies - Brian Wilson
15. Live - Lightning Crashes
16. Dave Matthews Band - Grey Street

* Live - I Alone would have been track 3 and pushed everything down

Poker Life (so far)

Many tragedies come from our physical and cognitive makeup. Our bodies are extraordinarily improbable arrangements of matter, with many ways for things to go wrong and only a few ways for things to go right. We are certain to die, and smart enough to know it. Our minds are adapted to a world that no longer exists, prone to misunderstandings correctable only by arduous education, and condemned to perplexity about the deepest questions we can entertain.

-Steven Pinker

I quit my job on March 25. I guess technically I quit a month before that, but my last day was March 25. I didn't know what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, but I knew I didn't want to work at GE any more. I knew I had always been curious what it would be like to play poker full time, so I decided until I figure out something better to do, I'd play a lot for a while and see how it went.

I had heard and read a lot about what its like to do this for a living. There are plenty of magazine articles, websites, TV shows, and internet message boards that discuss the pros and cons, highs and lows, feels, smells, and tastes of professional poker. A couple weeks ago, someone who has been there summed it all up for me: "Poker can be a brutal life, but a lucrative one. I wouldn't suggest it, but you'll find out for yourself."

I named my blog from the Buddha quote I have at the very bottom of this page. I can do all the research about poker life or what it would be like to work for another company or to go back to school, but its the "find out for yourself" part that resonates for me.

To be successful in a poker career, aside from poker talent, I always thought I would need to be capable of distancing myself from emotion and making rational decisions. I also figured I'd need to be comfortable with more of a "loner" lifestyle, and capable of good bankroll management. I believed I had these characteristics and abilities. I've always seen myself as unemotional and introverted, and with my finance background I didn't think I'd have trouble with the bankroll management.

Now, not even 3 weeks into this thing, how it going? I still believe I have the poker talent; I'm thriving on the solitude; Sleeping til 3pm is awesome; bankroll management hasn't been a problem yet. What I do question is my emotional capacity for coping with adversity.

Humans are social animals. We have always lived and worked in groups, and depended on our group for survival. Each person has to be trusted to contribute, and each person had to be able to trust the group will reward that contribution. Because this bond of trust is so important to the stability of a group, and thus to our individual survival, we have evolved certain emotions to reinforce it. Positive feelings like loyalty, honor, brotherly love, respect, dedication, patriotism, honesty and trust are a psychological glue that keep us together.

The flip side of that coin is that some of the strongest negative emotions we feel are reactions to breaking that social covenant. We feel guilt, shame or disgrace when we wrong someone who trusted us, and the wronged party feels betrayed and desires revenge. A highly developed negative sense is our "cheater-detection mechanism." 120,000 years ago it was "that bastard Og in cave 3 is eating more than his share of the antelope meat we caught" and today it is "that bastard Ogden in marketing barely did anything for this project, but he's going to take advantage of my hard work." We are all keenly alert for people taking advantage of us.

We all have experienced some form of these universal emotions, and understand the intense power they have over our actions. That power reflects the critical importance that working together played in the evolution of our species, and the danger of being taken advantage of.

What does that have to do with me and poker? Sometimes weird things can inadvertantly trigger those intense negative emotions. When someone catches the only card in the deck that could have beaten me, it feels like an injustice. It feels like the world owed me better, and someone has to pay for it. Obviously this is completely irrational. I know that if I'm in that situation 100 times, I'll win 98 of them and get paid off handsomely. But, my innate understanding of statistics isn't as well-tuned as my rational understanding, and my own mind betrays me as I feel a burn like I've been wronged.

Since March 26 I've played over 15,000 hands of poker. To put that in perspective, if you played in a casino and were dealt 30 hands an hour, you'd need about 3 months of playing 40 hours per week to play that many hands. But because internet poker is a lot faster, and I can play multiple tables simultaneously, that represents 71 hours of play and a little over 2 weeks. In this short time, I've seen the brutality to which Luke alluded. (So far the lucrative part eludes me.)

It usually doesn't bother me very much when I absorb one or two "bad beats." My style of play lends itself to them, because when I'm in there playing a hand, I usually started with something very strong, so usually my wilder opponents need to get lucky to beat me, which is of course going to happen some of the time. The theory is that it won't happen enough of the time to prevent me from winning overall, and long term it hasn't.

When it does start to bother me is when it happens a few times in a row, or on huge pots. In the last 2.5 weeks, I've suffered 3 months worth of bad beats, and the effect on my emotional state is cumulative. Feel the burn over and over, and that shit adds up.

In poker, when you let something bother you enough that your play suffers, it is called going on tilt. I've read world-class professionals say something to the effect of "I can't hope to eliminate tilt in my game, just to minimize it. I think of it as a business expense." They understand that it is part of our nature.

I've been suffering from short-term and long-term tilt lately. Short term tilt gets set off by a few tough beats in a row, and suddenly I'm playing hands differently that I normally would, usually to my disadvantage. Then those short-term downfalls and other factors have contributed to me playing poorly over a longer horizon. My recent woes, while likely at least partially just some bad luck, are probably also due to some questionable play on my part. Its a pretty viscious spiral. Brutal.

So while it wasn't realistic for me to expect to just dive right into this and be emotionally prepared for it, I do think that I can learn. I've made some key adjustments recently that I think are helping to put me back on track.

In regards to short-term tilt, I've started trying to implement a very simple remedy - count to 3. I'm trying to force myself to count to 3 before I make any action in big pots, or in hands that are likely to cause an emotional response. I noticed that often when I'm confronted by an unexpected raise from an opponent, that I too quickly go into a passive/defensive style of play. Sometimes this might be appropriate, but often it is not. Counting to 3 is helping already.

In regards to long-term, I've noticed I'm tending to play too passively overall lately. Related to this, I'm limping in early position with some weakish hands. In an effort to plug this leak as soon as possible, I've implemented a few rules:

1.) No limping in early position preflop (the first 3 people to act after the big blind). This means that if I'm in bad position, I either raise or fold. This is forcing me to dump hands like A8s, KJo, JTs, and 55 that I used to limp with.

2.) No open-limping. If I'm the first person into a pot, I am raising. Period.

3.) Assume your opponents are morons unless you have overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Act accordingly. This means that 99% of the actions you are faced with are pretty straight-forward. You can't bluff a calling station, and you can't check-raise someone who is afraid of their shadow. Bluff sparingly. Bet for value. Don't get fancy, jackass.

These rules aren't perfect, but they do more good than bad. They are part of Pinker's "arduous education" intended to help me overcome my natural tendancies. I think my game is starting to get back on track.

This is fun.

Desiderata

Desiderata
by Max Ehrmann


Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.


With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

poor little guy

If laughing at painful awkwardness is as good for you as it is for me, check this out.

Cacocallia

Cacocallia (KAK-uh-KAL-shee-uh) - The paradoxical state of being ugly but at the same time sexually desireable.




Mena Suvari


Anna Paquin



Hilary Swank


Steffi Graf


Mary Pierce

Sympathy for the Devil

I started running again now that the weather is getting warm. Yesterday I did about 2.5 miles in about 25 minutes and was struggling. Today I did 3 miles in about 30 minutes and felt pretty good. I'd like to get to 4 miles in 30 to 32 minutes comfortably. Running with music helps a lot.

Speaking of music, I realized I have 2 songs that have been on my playlists recently that tell tales of the triumph of man over evil beings in musical competition:

Tribute, Tenacious D
The Devil Went Down to Georgia, Charlie Daniels Band

In Tribute, JB and KG defeat the shiny demon by meeting his demand that they play the best song in the world. They played the first thing that came to their heads, and it just so happened to be the best song in the world. I take no issue with the story.

But in Charlie's tale, the Devil squares off against Johnny head to head, and after hearing Johnny play, the Devil bows his head as a concession of defeat. What is going on here?? That doesn't sound like the Price of Darkness that I know and love. Johnny's chops were definitely impressive, but Satan and the band of demons layed it down pretty damn good. Come on guy, at least put the decision to a 3rd party! I'd vote for you.

I guess that's the problem though - you couldn't really find impartial judges like me. Most mortals would be so terrified of the Devil that they would be too scared to decide against him. And any that aren't afraid of him probably are going to be biased against him. Then the immortals are already going to have well-established allegiances to Heaven or Hell, so you wouldn't be able to trust their objectivity. This situation must have been what it was like trying to pick Olympic figure skating judges during the Cold War.

See, in Tenacious D's ballad, there was a clearly defined objective goal. There is one single best song in the world, and thats what they played. In fact, upon hearing it, the fallen beast assumed that Jack and Rage Kage must have been angels to have have played it. The power and genius of Tribute is that we never actually get to hear the greatest song in the world, because they couldn't remember it after that fateful night. The best song in the world is like Keyser Soze, achieving mythical status because you never really know exactly what happened.

I suppose it is possible that Johnny and Satan had some mutual understanding about how the winner would be objectively decided, but that seems improbable. The major flaw is that we the listeners get to hear the fiddle contest, which opens its outcome to debate based on our subjective preferences. I think the Devil won.

Regardless, the Devil knew that he'd been beat. And he laid the golden fiddle on the ground at Johnny's feet. I guess its good to know that the Devil is exceedingly honest in his business dealings, because the way this poker thing is going I might have to make a few wagers with him myself...



NAY! WE ARE BUT MEN!

ROCK!!

How am I losing?

How am I losing when these are my opponents? Look at this...

Party Poker 3/6 Hold'em (9 handed)
Preflop: WeepForMe is Button with Th, Ah. UTG calls, 4 folds, CO calls, WeepForMe raises, 1 fold, BB calls, UTG calls, CO calls.
Flop: (8.33 SB) 4s, 4c, 4d (4 players)BB checks, UTG checks, CO checks, WeepForMe bets, BB calls, UTG calls, CO folds.
Turn: (5.66 BB) 2s (3 players)BB checks, UTG checks, WeepForMe bets, BB calls, UTG calls.
River: (8.66 BB) 7d (3 players)BB checks, UTG checks, WeepForMe checks.
Final Pot: 8.66 BB
Results below: BB has Kd Ts (three of a kind, fours). UTG has Ad 9s (three of a kind, fours). WeepForMe has Th Ah (three of a kind, fours). Outcome: WeepForMe wins 8.66 BB.

This is weak passive poker from my 2 opponents here. Limping UTG (UTG = Under the Gun = 1st person to act after the blinds) with A9o is generally awful, mainly for the exact reason illustrated by this hand - if you are up against a better Ace you are in big trouble. I think calling a raise from a solid player with KTo from the big blind is a pretty bad play also, because too often you are up against a better King or a better Ten. Both of these guys called flop and turn bets with only 3 outs.

How can I be losing to these guys? Its not just the passive, suspicious call stations either:

Party Poker 3/6 Hold'em (9 handed) converter
Preflop: WeepForMe is Button with Ah, Ac. 5 folds, CO calls, WeepForMe raises, 2 folds, CO calls.
Flop: (5.33 SB) 3s, Jc, 7s (2 players)CO checks, WeepForMe bets, CO raises, WeepForMe calls.
Turn: (4.66 BB) 8h (2 players)CO bets, WeepForMe raises, CO calls.
River: (8.66 BB) 6d (2 players)CO checks, WeepForMe bets, CO calls.
Final Pot: 10.66 BB
Results below: CO has Qh 8c (one pair, eights). WeepForMe has Ah Ac (one pair, aces). Outcome: WeepForMe wins 10.66 BB.

Lets walk through this hand from the perspective of my opponent, Mr. CO (CO = Cutoff = the person sitting to the right of the button):

Hi, I'm the moron in the cutoff. Everyone folds to me, and I look down and see a potential monster hand with my unsuited Q8. Rather than raise and risk everyone folding and suffer the disaster of just stealing the blinds, I'm going to limp. Excellent! The unsuspecting fool in on the button raises for me! I'll just call for now. He'll never know what hit him.

HAHA!!! My dream flop, J73 with 2 spades! I have a spade! Oh no wait, I don't, but no matter. I still have the powerful Queen high. Given that the button raised preflop, he'll probably bet if I check, so I'll do that and continue my trap. He fell for it, what a chump! At this point the only possible hand he could have is AK, which I can't beat yet, but I know that nobody on PartyPoker ever calls to the river with an unimproved AK, I'm going to check-raise him and outplay him. Ha! He just called my raise, he must not have anything. Maybe I'm even winning with my Queen. I am so good at poker!!!!!

Woah, the turn was my supercard. Now I have a pair of eights, so I have to keep betting. What?? He raised?? He must not know I have a pair of eights. Hmmm, $6 more? I better call this. I guess he might have a better hand than me, but that seems pretty unlikely. I'll just play it safe and call.

Darn, that river didn't help me. I'll do this guy a favor and just check my pair of eights. He bet again? Maybe he has that Jack after all. I'm going to call him though, just to keep him honest. Nobody bluffs me out of a hand!

How am I losing to these hopeless bluffing clowns? Even when they stop bluffing, they just keep hoping...

Party Poker 3/6 Hold'em (10 handed)
Preflop: WeepForMe is SB with Kd, Kh. UTG calls, 3 folds, MP2 calls, 2 folds, Button calls, WeepForMe raises, 1 fold, UTG 3-bets, MP2 calls, Button folds, WeepForMe calls.
Flop: (11 SB) 4s, Ah, 5c (3 players)WeepForMe checks, UTG bets, MP2 calls, WeepForMe calls.
Turn: (7 BB) 4d (3 players)WeepForMe checks, UTG checks, MP2 checks.
River: (7 BB) 6h (3 players)WeepForMe bets, UTG folds, MP2 calls.
Final Pot: 9 BB
Results below: WeepForMe has Kd Kh (two pair, kings and fours). MP2 has 7c 7d (two pair, sevens and fours).
Outcome: WeepForMe wins 9 BB.

First let's talk to MP2 (middle position #2). Given a preflop raise from the SB (small blind) and a 3bet, and then 2 other people putting money in on an Ace-high flop, did you really believe that 77 could win this hand? Even when the UTG guy folds, what did you think I had? You watched me raise preflop from awful position. If you had been paying attention, you'd see I am a pretty tight player, so to raise from there I probably had to have a big pair or an Ace with a good kicker, right? In fact, the only pocket pair you can beat on the river is 22 or 33, so you must think I have that? Or maybe you thought I'd get wild with KQ? Please keep playing in my games.

Second, lets talk to trendy young man who decided after calling the blinds that he would try "that sweet move everyone is doing these days," the limp-reraise. Look son, I know you think that is a cool move to try with your 89s, but you really ought to save it for another time. Like maybe when you have a few more people in the pot, or a bit better position for later in the hand. Or maybe wait for when you have a fucking clue. Leave the big boy tools for the big boys to use. Go play on a swing set.

Ok, so in all of those hands I knew I was in pretty good shape, and was glad that my inept opponents made it easy for me. What about hands where it isn't so clear?

Party Poker 3/6 Hold'em (9 handed)
Preflop: WeepForMe is BB with Th, 8s. 3 folds, MP2 calls, 3 folds, SB completes, WeepForMe checks.
Flop: (3 SB) 5s, 3s, Ts (3 players)SB checks, WeepForMe bets, MP2 calls, SB calls.
Turn: (3 BB) Js (3 players)SB checks, WeepForMe checks, MP2 bets, SB calls, WeepForMe folds.
River: (5 BB) 3h (2 players)SB checks, MP2 checks.
Final Pot: 5 BB
Results below: SB has 6c 7s (flush, jack high). MP2 has 9h Td (two pair, tens and threes). Outcome: SB wins 5 BB.

Folding the best hand is always annoying. I had this hand wrong from beginning to end. I got to see the flop for free, and immediately didn't like the situation I was in. I actually flopped the exact same thing recently (I had top pair of tens on a flop with 3 spades and the 8 of spades as my kicker. I was up against someone with AT and the Ace of spades, and it sucked.) and didn't want the same thing to happen. When everyone called the flop bet I remember thinking that I had the best hand and that I hoped a spade didn't hit, so I checked when the spade hit. It never occured to me that MP2 might have been playing a ten, and that the SB would call a bet with no pair and a spade lower than my 8.

So I was completely clueless this hand. If this was $15/30 and we encountered the same flop situation, I would have bet, the T9 guy would have raised to protect his vulnerable top pair, and the small blind would have folded. Then I would have check-called the rest of the way and won. But I don't play $15/30 online. I don't play $15/30 because I don't have the bankroll. I don't have the bankroll because I can't beat $3/6 for enough money to build my bankroll. I also don't play $15/30 because every time I've taken a shot at it I get crushed. I get crushed probably for the same reason that I can't beat the $3/6 game, which is that I don't know what the hell I'm doing most of the time regardless of the limit. So I probably shouldn't play for higher stakes against better players. Not that that usually stops anyone.

Sorry for that rant. I conclude that my cluelessness this hand was only because my opponents misplayed their hands so much that I couldn't possibly know what what going on. I'll just keep telling myself that. (How am I losing to these guys?)

So usually I'm completely clueless. But sometimes I know what's up. Observe:

Party Poker 3/6 Hold'em (9 handed)
Preflop: WeepForMe is UTG with Jd, Jc. WeepForMe raises, UTG+1 calls, 3 folds, CO calls, 2 folds, BB calls. Flop: (8.33 SB) 4c, Qs, 6h (4 players)BB bets, WeepForMe calls, UTG+1 calls, CO calls.
Turn: (6.16 BB) 5h (4 players)BB bets, WeepForMe folds, UTG+1 calls, CO folds.
River: (8.16 BB) Ks (2 players)BB checks, UTG+1 bets, BB calls. Final Pot: 10.16 BB
Results below: BB has Qd 8s (one pair, queens). UTG+1 has 7h Ah (high card, ace). Outcome: BB wins 10.16 BB.

I've had a rough time today with JJ, and this time I knew enough to lay it down. I guess I smelled his Q, but apparently the guy who coldcalled my UTG raise with A7 did not get the whiff. How am I losing to these people?

In the next hand I combined cluelessness and a sense of smell. I smelled danger, but I'm clueless as to whether it was right.


Party Poker 3/6 Hold'em (10 handed) converter
Preflop: WeepForMe is Button with Qs, Kc. 1 fold, UTG+1 calls, 3 folds, MP3 calls, 1 fold, WeepForMe raises, 1 fold, BB calls, UTG+1 calls, MP3 calls.
Flop: (8.33 SB) Kh, 7h, Jd (4 players)BB checks, UTG+1 bets, MP3 calls, WeepForMe raises, BB folds, UTG+1 calls, MP3 calls.
Turn: (7.16 BB) 3d (3 players)UTG+1 checks, MP3 checks, WeepForMe bets, UTG+1 calls, MP3 raises, WeepForMe calls, UTG+1 3-bets, MP3 caps, WeepForMe folds, UTG+1 calls.
River: (17.16 BB) 3c (2 players)UTG+1 folds.
Final Pot: 17.16 BB
Results below: MP3 doesn't show. Outcome: MP3 wins 17.16 BB.

Everything was going along fine until the turn. I had a decent hand got a decent flop, although not one I was entirely comfortable with. There were lots of draws, so I wanted to keep the pressure on.

On the turn, Mp3 (middle position 3) checkraised me, which sent off huge warning bells on this board, especially because I had observed that player to be very straightforward (he had the Q8 from the last hand). It probably meant he had a set, but I called 1 more bet hoping that he had a vulnerable 2 pair and I had the odds to chase it.

Then in got weird, as UTG+1 (UTG+1 = the guy after UTG = 2nd to act after the blinds) decided to 3bet it. Given his actions so far I read this to mean he had a big draw, either the nut heart flush draw from the flop since he bet at it, or perhaps he bet the flop with QT for an openended straight draw and maybe backed into the diamond flush draw also. I thought I had him beat, but when the guy caps, I let go of my hand. I'm pretty sure I would have lost, but for 17 bets I have to be pretty damn sure of it for the laydown to be correct.

At this point, you'll notice that I've been folding a lot of hands. You might suggest that the reason I'm losing is that I'm folding too often, even if the hands I've shared here all should have been folded. Maybe that is the case, or maybe not:

Party Poker 3/6 Hold'em (9 handed) converter
Preflop: WeepForMe is CO with 6d, 6c. 3 folds, MP2 calls, MP3 raises, WeepForMe calls, 1 fold, SB calls, 1 fold, MP2 calls.
Flop: (9 SB) Tc, 4c, 7d (4 players)SB checks, MP2 bets, MP3 calls, WeepForMe raises, SB folds, MP2 calls, MP3 calls.
Turn: (7.50 BB) 3c (3 players)MP2 checks, MP3 bets, WeepForMe calls, MP2 folds.
River: (9.50 BB) 2s (2 players)MP3 bets, WeepForMe calls.
Final Pot: 11.50 BB
Results below: MP3 has Ad Qc (high card, ace). WeepForMe has 6d 6c (one pair, sixes). Outcome: WeepForMe wins 11.50 BB.

Sometimes I'll fold 66 to a preflop raise, sometimes I'll 3 bet. This time I called.

That isn't a flop that was likely to have helped anyone. Mp2 seemed to be thinking the same thing when he bet the flop, and when the preflop raiser just called it, I decided to raise. I thought there was a decent chance I had the best hand, and I wanted see where I stood. I didn't like it that the SB called 2 cold, but he later folded the turn for 1 bet, so he's an idiot.

The preflop raiser comes to life and bets out when the turn brings a 3rd club. This struck me as extremely suspicious. Given that he raised preflop, if he had 2 big clubs in his hand, I think he would have raised the flop. I think he also would have raised the flop with an overpair or with a ten in his hand, so I concluded that he must have decided to bet out with the A or K of clubs as a semibluff. I definitely wasn't going to fold, but I decided I didn't want to raise and then get 3bet by MP2 if he was betting out on the flop with a flush draw. In retrospect I think I should have raise here to force MP2 to fold a 7 or a T, but luckily he must not have had a pair because he folded. I conclude he didn't have a pair because nobody in the history of Party Poker $3/6 has ever folded a pair for 1 bet.

The river call is easy, and I win a big pot with a shitty hand, because I'm so very awesome. How am I losing to these players?

Obviously I picked these hands specifically to tell a story. Given the thousands of hands I play, I could probably pick out a few hands that tell any story I want. (Maybe I should do a followup post, "Oh wait... this is why I'm losing." I have about 17,000 hands to tell that story.)

That is what makes a losing streak of this duration so frustrating, especially when my key metrics really haven't changed at all. I could come up with any kind of theory about what is wrong, and I'd probably be able to find plenty of evidence for it. But then I'd get cute and be able to find plenty of evidence against it as well. There are no easy answers. I'll keep doing analysis both of individual hands and of my overall stats, hoping to find something that I can fix, but I'm resigned to the idea that it won't be so simple. For now I'm just going to keep playing. I think I can turn it around.

Because making unbeatable hands is so rare, playing hold'em without confidence is dangerous. Even the worst players seem to be able to smell blood somehow, even online. And so losing can be contagious and there is no simple prescription like "tighten up," "be more aggressive," or "more cowbell." I think that one thing writing this helped me realize is that my instincts are usually pretty good, and maybe too often I'm talking myself out of following them.

Thoughts?