If I Had A Hammer

I have to admit, this is pretty pathetic compared to almost anyone else's Hammer Story. Still, it was my first pure bluff with the hammer, and it almost made me feel like a poker blogger again.

Dealer: Starting new hand: #1154281799
Dealer: TwinCat posts small blind $0.02
Dealer: skipper57 posts big blind $0.05
Dealer: Dealing Hole Cards
Dealer: matybone folds
Dealer: Prez01, it's your turn. You have 15 seconds to act
Dealer: Prez01 folds
Dealer: Amandalishus raises $0.05 to $0.10
Dealer: damom folds
Dealer: jims850 folds
Dealer: JJSlyfox folds
Dealer: kjester folds
Dealer: TwinCat folds
Dealer: skipper57 calls $0.05
Dealer: Dealing Flop: [9d Ac 4h]
Dealer: skipper57 checks
Dealer: Amandalishus bets $0.05
Dealer: skipper57 folds
Dealer: Game #1154281799: Amandalishus wins pot ($0.22)
Dealer: Amandalishus shows [2d 7s] high card Ace
Dealer: Starting new hand: #1154285671
Dealer: skipper57 posts small blind $0.02
Amandalishus: The Hammer!
Dealer: matybone posts big blind $0.05
Dealer: Dealing Hole Cards
Dealer: Prez01 folds
Dealer: Amandalishus folds
skipper57: *****

I've been really depressed recently, playing some poker but not feeling much like talking about it, or in fact anything. There's a ton of stuff that other bloggers have written recently that have nearly inspired me to get back to this... G-Rob's musings on addicition and Pauly's comments on refocusing the blog are at the top of this list. And my favorite lucky charm on PokerStars, mapokaplaya, has been occasionally imploring me for more frequent updates for a while. Well, I'm working on it. We'll see. I'm trying to figure out why I'm doing this, and if there's more risk than benefit in making it all public, and if I should keep my coments purely to poker or what. If there's anyone out there still reading, I'll let you know as soon as I figure it all out. If I do. And if I don't, thanks for the brief but much-needed support and feedback I've gotten. It's been nice to have an audience again, even if it's not been the kind I'm used to.

Personality Crisis

It’s been a long December, but there’s reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can’t remember all the times I tried to tell my myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass
And it’s one more day up in The Canyon
And it’s one more night in Hollywood
It’s been so long since I’ve seen the ocean...I guess I should

Every year I find another reason to love that song.

I was really beginning to wonder if I'd been deluding myself regarding my mad skillz at the poker table. I guess I probably say that every other entry or so. Still, it had been a long slow slide, and accompanied by everything else going on I had allowed Despair into my Heart. Or something like that.

The JetSetPoker Bonus Whoring Experiment has been going badly. I cashed in only two of the 18 SnGs I'd played since the beginning of November. Not a terrible blow at 2.50+.25, but ten consecutive losses still dampens the spirits a bit. Back home at PokerStars, I haven't exactly been crushing the games either. At 5c/10c I'm down to about 6.5 BB/100, whereas I was making more like 12 before November. I've also had a bad run of tournaments, only making it past the first break once in the four I'd played. Overall, a bad month plus.

In my defense, of course, there were Extenuating Circumstances. Most of that play was during brief breaks from work, and I never play my best when I'm stressed like that. Then there was my brief foray back into those Other Addictions, about which the less said the better. I'm trying to forget that not-brief-enough lapse in judgement, since nobody except my mom seems to have noticed, but let's just say I'm glad I wasn't playing poker then. I spent my recovery time at my mom's, getting treated like a stupid little girl who'd picked up a bad cold playing with someone she shouldn't have (which was relatively true, I suppose). It's probably best that she doesn't have internet access, since I was probably bored enough to play but mentally vacant enough to lose.

Amazing how much a personality break-down can affect your game, isn't it? But now, with work finally caught up and my other problems left behind again (for the moment), it's been good to be able to focus on the cards again. I think the aforementioned lapse in judgement was due at least in part to the limited amount of time I'd been able to spend really playing at the beginning of the month. Anyway, a few days back with my concentration restored have done wonders for my confidence. I finally broke my losing streak at JetSet last night, tripling up early with 88 against AQ and JJ on a flop of QQ8 and proceeding to bully the rest of the table into submission over the next hour.

That was nice, but really just a return to form and therefore not terribly exciting. Tonight, however, I feel like I made some real progress. PokerStars is running a promotion leading up to their billionth hand, giving away a bunch of cash to the winner of every 100,000 raked hands. Of course, my favorite tables down in the 5c/10c area are unraked (I guess they figure what's the point of taking a cut of my tiny pots), so they've reduced the number of active tables to almost nil. The last few days I've had to cut my play short to keep myself from taking The Big Slide. It's not that the play is too tough for me, but it's far looser than I'd like considering my vulnerability to variance at that level. Well, that and the bad beats. KK goes down to 64 of diamonds. AA loses to JT that spikes a second pair on the river. Other various and sundry disasters of slightly lesser magnitude, all leaving me broke and cursing.

Tonight, though, I finally managed to put it all together. I think I finally picked up a clue to better table selection and took a seat at a tighter table than I'd seen. My big pairs held up. And I just played better, more confidently, than I had been. Or maybe I was just lucky, I don't know. Whatever factors contributed, I finally managed a real winning session at a 25c/50c table, tripling my buy-in in just over an hour and erasing the losses from my previous two sessions this week. All in all, a good night.

And of course, the third and most important reason I feel on top of my game again is right before your eyes: my second post in less than a week! I also spent some time playing for the formatting a bit, although I think I managed to screw up the early posts as much as I improved the more recent ones. I'm new to this CSS stuff, but I don't think I did too much damage considering I'm working from an internet tutorial one of the guys at work found for me. Expect more improvements in the near future. By the way, does anyone know if there's any way to include images? How about how to include a page counter?

Okay, enough for now. It's Mandy's bedtime. Good night dead readers, sleep well, and dream of rockets and hammers.

The Return of the Lizard King

Too many people, and not enough eyes to see
Too many lives to lead, and not enough time
It's too late, she's gone too far, she's lost herself...
She's come undone

You want to know what I hate about the internet? Out of the 10000 or so sites that come up for the google search "she's come undone" lyrics, about 63 of them list the lyrics as "she's lost the sun". Of course, I always thought that was the lyric, and I don't have a freakin Guess Who CD, or at least I wouldn't admit it if I did. I don't want to contribute to the general ignorance of the internet, so I want to be right in case some search engine is reading me (or in case anyone is reading me). Of course, none of these sites bothers to say:

Even though many people thought the lyric was thus, Bob Songwriter of the Guess Who set the record straight in an interview with Rolling Stone in October of 1987. "Uh, yeah, it's 'She lost herself,'" he explained sheepishly. "That's how we sang it live, almost every show. But Leady had been drinking since the previous night when we recorded that, and I couldn't get him to sing it right even when I threatened to shove a drumstick up his knacker."

That would be helpful, and probably there's a site out there somewhere that explains all this. Unfortunately, "she's come undone" lyrics knacker comes up with no hits. What's a girl to do? So, uh, hi. I'm back. Uh, heard ya missed me...? I feel like I owe an apology to anyone who happens to still be bothering to check this site still. I made a commitment to you, not to mention myself, to keep updating this silly thing at least three times a week, and then I sorta blew it. I could plead holidays, illness, or extenuating circumstances, and probably even sound convincing. At least, I've convinced a lot of people of those things. But I've been trying to be honest in these posts, and this isn't just a diary, it's a poker diary, and it's all Jim McManus's fault. The romantic bastard.

Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for about a month ago, shortly after my last entry. After about a week of twelve or fourteen hour days, I finally finished the first draft of the project on Saturday. We weren't going to get anything back from the client for at three or four days, so I had some time to kill. I was pretending that I was Christmas shopping at Borders and convinced myself that Positively Fifth Street would be more relaxing than trying to read the strategy guide I really should have been getting. But Super-System is expensive, and I'm not sure if I should read a how-to guide anyway. I really hate instruction manuals, they just don't work for me. I have to learn by watching someone, which is why I think I've picked up poker so quickly. Um, right, sidetracked again. Anyway, I spent all night Sunday reading it. I didn't even play in any tournaments, it just sucked me in completely. The relationships he sees are astounding, like James Burke on a bender with Hunter S. Thompson.

"Did you know, Hunter," Burke would slur, "that LSD was first discovered by Albert Hoffman." Thompson would glare at Burke menacingly. "Who the fuck is this Hoffman geek?" he'd snarl. "I'll take care of the bastard." "No, no, no," Burke would stammer, making pacifying gestures. "He's already dead. He absorbed several milligrams of pure LSD-25 through his fingertips before riding his bike home for lunch." Hunter would shake his head sadly. "Poor son of a bitch never had a chance. Of course, I've done it in the jungles of Cambodia, but I'm a trained professional."

So somewhere in the first hundred or so pages, amidst the compelling story and the amazing quotes, McManus managed to make explicit to me the eldritch connection between sex, drugs, dancing, religion and poker. All of which I've had, um, problems with at some point in my past. About the time I hit this paragraph, I had one of those a-ha moments, one with a dark clarity: I'm never going to beat my addictions. I'm trapped by the circuitry in my brain. Fighting it, keeping the dark terrible angel within at bay, is sacrificing potential gain for longevity. I was trying to fold my way into the money. I wasn't playing to win.

It was Friday afternoon and we still hadn't gotten any word from the client on the documentation. I had a whole weekend to play. New experiences and new sensations have always been my downfall. I knew now that I was doomed to this. I left work early with a familiar smile on my face, stopped at the bank for some cash, and called some people I hadn't talked to since about this time last year. By nine I was meeting a guy in a club I used to work at, swapping the cash for a balloon and some more explicit instructions in duplicating Ted Binion's preferred method for the first time.

I know I've mentioned a few times that this whole diary idea was suggested by my therapist. Playing poker online was as well, at least indirectly, but I know she's beginning to regret that one. It's all part of my Outpatient Post-Enrollment Care Package, which is what we call the ways that I've agreed to be monitored by the benefactor of my stay in the rehab center.

I can't complain, I've gotten some useful insights out of the therapy, some reasonably effective antidepressants, and sleeping pills that keep me from seeing the bleak side of 4am too often. Plus I learned to play poker in rehab. We started playing 7-card stud for cigarettes, just to pass the time when TV sucked. Pretty soon, though, somebody introduced hold'em, and there was no going back. Of course, no-limit didn't work very well for cigarettes, especially when we mostly would share anyway outside of the game. Pretty soon people were asking for pennies instead of quarters for the vending machines. And pretty shortly after that, I wasn't asking for any money at all.

Hmm. This is dragging on longer than I thought, and I promised myself I'd try to keep these things shorter after some of the comments I'd been getting. Of course, now that I've dropped off the face of the internet for a month, I kind of wonder if anyone will even know I've started writing again. I'll finish the story next time, kids, I promise. Yes, and more talk about poker too. If we have time, and you brush your teeth without arguing.

Half Asleep in Frog Pyjamas

I can't even begin to explain how buried in work I've been this week. It goes without saying that I've never been this swamped by work before. The fact of the matter is, I'm not certain my work has ever interfered significantly with my social life before. When I told my boss that he laughed, and those of you with actual careers are probably doing the same, but this is the first job I've had where the "opportunity for advancement" didn't mean shifts assigned by seniority. It makes me wonder if I'm really cut out for this whole "real job" thing. I don't think I really excel at the sort of long-term thinking that makes a typical career very likely. On the other hand, I can't go back to waiting tables. It's too late for that now, was too late for that the first time I got a $100 tip. Among all my other addictions, I'm addicted to money as well -- after all, I'm living in a material world, and I am a material girl. And money is one of my few addictions that's still socially acceptable.

All of which just illustrates the necessity that I take some time off to hone my poker skills. I was pretty excited tonight when I finally had enough time to sit down in my pj's for some quality time with my laptop again. I've played for a few minutes here and there throughout the week, but this was my first opportunity to really play with my winnings from the tournament last Sunday, so I found a juicy .25/.50 table on PokerStars and waited for the blind to come around.

Of course, nothing ever goes as planned... it's a hell of a notion. While I watched one guy at the table call down two raises with king-high, my friend R called. R was good friends with my first roommate after I dropped out of college, and she's just sort of "hung around" ever since. Not that I don't love her, of course, but she's the sort of person that strangers will eventually kiss, just to shut her up. Every few months I get a call, either because she's forgotten the band that did that one CD or because she just saw a movie on TV that we saw together six years ago or... well, you get the idea.

Tonight was neither of those, however. Actually, I really thought that R had been the first to commit a breach of the unspoken ethics that surrounds my relationships with most of my "old friends" these days. Secretly I was glad, but I acted a little shocked when she asked if I knew how to get ahold of X. Of course, I'm not supposed to, but I do still know how. My naughty little brain just keeps track of stuff like that, files it under Important even if I don't want it to. Anyway, I acted bit cagey with R, just in case she was checking up on me or something, but the further into the conversation, the less sense she made. When I pleaded ignorance, she asked if another mutual friend A might know. Now A was never really into that scene, and that seemed an odd choice of people to metion.

"WTF?" I exclaimed. "Why would A know?"

"Well, he is her brother."

I admit it took my a good thirty seconds (and probably a few embarrassing sentences) before I figured out what should have been obvious right there. She was trying to get ahold of A's brother Ed. Should've been obvious from the first; R calls me for lost phone numbers far more often that for drugs anyway, as often she's the hookup for the latter and incapable of keeping the former. Anyway, that straightened out, I convinced her I had no idea and got off the phone.

Due to the confusion, I'd been distracted when the blind came around and clicked to sit in on auto-pilot. I was also on the phone when I saw the flop for free and near-free in the big and small blinds with absolute trash and folded to the first bet I saw. When I finally managed to free myself from the conversation, I woke up 15c down, having just called with a Q6o from the button. Not normally a call I'd make with four players in the flop plus the blinds to come, but well... still not terrible from the button at least. Small and big blinds both stay in and the flop comes A84 with two hearts. As the table is checking around to me, my brain is frantically trying to recall small details of what happened while I was on the phone. I'd hoped to uncover some clue whether I'd managed to look tight or just stupid when I'd mucked the two last ones. Unfortunately, no details had escaped the black hole of R's conversation, so when the bet came to me I spun my wheels for a moment before putting out the 25c flop bet.

I expected to have to fold to a raise, one of these players must have an A or a flush draw, but instead saw three folds and three calls. It occurred to me that one of the three might be slow-playing two pair to keep extra players in, even though there was a flush draw. But what were the other two on? Ed... er, X?

The turn was a blank, the 10c or something. Again it checked around to me, but this time I'd lost my nerve. There were too many players, one of them would call me down, I could almost smell it. I checked so fast that thought they were at a hockey game for a second.

The river was an 8h, and my mouse drifted as if of it's own accord towards the location of the inevitable fold button. That made the top half of the drawing hands out there. Which, it occurred to me, is about as good an idea of my cards as these guys could possibly have. "She could have any of those drawing hands for that flop bet," they were thinking as they checked around to me. It was so clear I could almost read it in chat.

I stuck 50c in the pot confidently this time, and the folds were done in the blink of my eyes. "Hmm," I thought. "Tight table. Tight, and rather unlucky."

Of course, I went on to lose my whole stack over the next three hands. AT to AJ (Ace up + J kicker), KK to Q8o (Qs and 8s with an A), and KK (again, next hand, really) to AA on a flop of QJT. The poker gods are capricious, rewarding good play but punishing good cards. They're almost as bad as that G-d character everybody is always talking about.

Okay, that's it, I have a presentation at 10am and there's only so much coffee I can drink between when I wake up and then. Tomorrow (or this weekend for sure) on Diary of a Poker Slut: At least two stupid PokerTracker questions, my next installment of My Poker Heroes, and pining for Las Vegas. Plus: Viewer Mail. Don't miss it! :-)

Curse Sir Walter Raleigh, He Was Such a Stupid Git

No more computer. Mandy's tired. Just had to share.

PokerStars Tournament #3310518, No Limit Hold'em
Super Satellite
Buy-In: $3.00
1723 players
Total Prize Pool: $5169.00
Target Tournament #3309855
9 tickets to the target tournament

Tournament started - 2004/11/14 - 20:00:00 (ET)

Dear Amandalishus,

You finished the tournament in 36th place.
A $18.10 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

You earned 104.59 tournament leader points in this tournament.
For information about our tournament leader board, see our web site at
http://www.pokerstars.com/tlb_tournament_rankings.html

Congratulations!
Thank you for participating.

HYHU > Cracklin' Rosie > HYHU

Well, my therapist says that the third week is a delicate time for making or breaking a habit, so it's crucial that I keep writing. "Even if it's only about poker," she says. As if "only" applies to poker. The fact that some of My Poker Heroes (ooh, I like that... look for that in a sidebar near you) are apparently reading makes me feel pretty cool though, and I've got a pile of half-written ideas that will eventually turn into posts. I can keep this up at least as long as my bankroll holds out. And just so you know, I'm planning to dig up quotes and show you all exactly what I've learned... you know who you are.

Of course, I'm not sure exactly how long that might be. I think I now know why 300BB is gospel. Because you see, if you question it... well, let's just say it's best not to question it. Why? Because if you... say, that's a really nice hand you've got there. Yep, look just like Paris and Nicky. Be a pity if something were to... happen to them, wouldn't it?

Not that I've gone down anything like 300, at least not yet, but I've been focusing on not letting the losing sessions affect my judgement, and mostly I've been successful. Maudie took The Big Slide once, she says, "but it was largely due to lack of discipline combined with stepping up - and staying up there longer than I should have." She gave me some good advice about stepping up every once in a while to "clear the cobwebs that can develop when you get dulled by the grind," which helped break my six session 300 hand losing streak mid-week. (Have I mentioned that I love PokerTracker recently? Best. Software. Ever.)/

SirFWALGMan also claims to have ridden The Big Slide down, and he claims the same reason as Maudie. Apparently he's not one for dilly-dallying around, though, so he went through his in one "Tilt-a-Whirl night" when he "could not bring it back and blew a $1200 bankroll." Uh. Wow. I'm officially enshrining SirFWALGMan in the list of My Poker Heroes (did I mention how much I like that?), and not only because I like Tilt-a-Whirls. He's been crushing 3/6 and transitioning well to 5/10, but the additional Karmic Energy provided by my blog link can't hurt. Anyway, it's only fitting that he be added to the list second, as he was my second comment. You know what they say about the second guy to sign a girl's freshman yearbook? So now I think you're morally obligated to tell me what the letters stand for, FWALG. Doesn't that seem only fair?

In the Yet-Another-Busted-Cherry Department, I played my first heads-up SnG tonight. Mostly I've stayed away from these, partially because I don't really consider myself at my best heads-up (at the poker table, at least) and partially because they seem like so much more of a coinflip than a single table game. And mostly, I don't think my impression has been changed. Let's just say the better player didn't win.

I've been kind of ashamed to mention this, but PokerStars isn't the only site I play at. Y'see, I also have an account with JetSetPoker. I know, I know, the software is The Cheesiest, but the games are softer than Charmin. I really don't know if it's the cartoon interface or not, but I have this impression that every player on there is 13 years old and playing with daddy's money. I think I talked about how I ended up at PokerStars in my second post (back when I was a naive, innocent poker slut), but about a month ago I found myself with $50 left in my pocket when my paycheck was gone. I was going to deposit it at PokerStars so I could afford to enter the Blogger Tournament last month, but... well, I got a little star-struck looking at the list of players who had already registered and I chickened out. So anyway, I had this money burning a whole in my pocket, and along comes a 50% deposit bonus from JetSet. Well, I knew the games were soft at JetSet, and I'd been reading all these glowing accounts of bonus whoring, and somehow the money was there before I'd even read the fine print.

The fine print wasn't as bad as it could have been, but it did seem like it was going to take a long long time to work my bonus off at the levels I play. There really aren't enough players there for micro-limit cash games, and anyway the Go!Points (yes, that's really what they're called, exclamation point and all) I'd earn wouldn't come nearly fast enough. However, after playing around with Excel for a couple hours, I determined that the last of my bonus would be credited just before I went broke if I could average an 80% ROI on the 5+.50 tournaments and SnGs. I felt like I could probably do that, and I bought myself some insurance by sitting down for my first tournament there and beating off 86 of the 87 other players for a $47 cash-out.

Why didn't I mention this before? I've been bragging about all my other wins. But, well, this is JetSet we're talking about. I don't feel like that win really counted, because the play was so bad, and I was so lucky. Anyway, I didn't take notes, counting on the hand history to nudge my memory later. Imagine how stupid I felt when the menu item called Hand History told me it was not yet enabled. Since then, I've played a lot of tournaments that I didn't write about because I didn't have a history. In total I've played 24 tournaments there, including multis, SnGs, bounty tournaments... and now, one heads-up.

The thing is, despite the fact that I really feel like I'm better than the vast bulk of those players, I'm down from my post-first-tournament peak of 91.75 to 78.63 remaining. Of course, that's still a 130% ROI, but it feels like I'm slipping. I left my friends at the bar kind of early tonight because I was feeling yucky and I could hear the JetSet SnG's calling to me, so I played one and took first pretty easily. I quickly climbed back in but lost a couple of small pots early and had to tighten up quite a bit against the horde of calling stations arrayed against me. About midway through the fourth level, I raised 3xBB in the cut-off with KTs and got called by the button and the big blind. The flop came K72 with three suits and the blind checked to me. I bet the pot, figuring I needed to take this one down to pad my stack a bit. The button tanked for a bit before calling, and I put him on a middle pair or a Kx of some kind. The blind folded and before the trey of spades even hit the digital felt I realized I'd made a big mistake. I looked at my stack, looked at his stack, looked at the size of the pot... and pushed my chips. When he called my flop bet, I'd become pot committed without even realizing it.

I'm sure you realize that you wouldn't be reading about this hand if he hadn't had a K3. Oh The Humanity.

I guess I tilted a little bit after that. The SnGs fill up slowly if at all on JetSet. Again, no players, no history, cartoon interface - I can't tell you how not-worth-it JetSet is, although I'd love it if you'd use my name if you insist on signing up ;-). I mentioned before that I consider the heads-up SnGs little better than flipping a coin for five bucks, but I figured on JetSet I'd have an edge. And sadly enough, I was right.

For the first few levels, Bill and I had a friendly little game of poker, see-sawing more than Bobby and Cindy. When the blinds hit 50/100 I started to push a little bit, and I was slowly gaining an edge on him in play if not in chips. When the blinds hit 75/150, I was definitely in control of the game although I was down about T200. He called from the SB and I raised to T300 from the button with QJs. He thought for a few seconds and called. The flop came Q98 with two diamonds and he checked, which looked pretty good for me. I couldn't put him on a bigger Q than me, so I bet T450 to knock him off that ugly flush draw. Bill thought a while again, then he called. Again.

That kind of worried me. I don't like it when people call my bets. It makes me think they're up to something. What I suspected Bill was up to was something like A8 (good) or 98 (not so good). When a diamond hit the turn and he checked, I was in trouble. A small bet would either earn me a call or a re-raise all in. A check would just induce him to make a bet I couldn't afford to call on the river. That really only left one option. I pushed my chips.

I'm sure you realize that you wouldn't be reading about this hand if he hadn't had the 74(!) of diamonds. Oh The Humanity.

Like I said, this just reinforces the coinflip hypothesis I made earlier. I don't think the structure of a heads-up no-limit tournament favors the better player as much as a single- or multi-player structure. I'm pretty certain I get more out of watching the other players for an hour or two than they get out of watching me. And when it gets down to heads-up, sooner or later you'll have to deal with the Eternal 50/50 Proposition: either he's got it or he don't.

Wow. This is a big one. Am I getting old if two hours of typing makes my fingers ache? Guess I'd better go get some sleep. Right after a quick session at PokerStars, I promise.

Bandage and Discipline

Very little new to report, as I had a mostly poker-free weekend. I've been emotionally over-wrought, financially over-extended and vocationally over-challenged for the last few days. It's so hard to maintain discipline sometimes... it would be so easy to go back to being a fish, pushing my chips around with abandon and hoping I keep catching lucky. The poker table is the only place I have been able to maintain focus lately. I did however cash in one of those three dollar multis on PokerStars Friday night. They paid the top 180 and I only made the first bracket (140% ROI, woohoo), but it was the most expensive multi I've cashed in yet. I guess I should be more excited, but I'm actually kind of disappointed. I played really well through the first two breaks, even getting up to 12th chip position with about 260 left. Then I blew it all, going all in with the nut flush against a player that obviously caught the boat on fourth. It was one of those moments when you can tell that you're making the wrong move but can't seem to stop yourself, like slamming your finger in the car door or something. Of course, I had the other player covered, so I managed to mostly fold my way into the money, but I know that I really blew a chance there. I guess what it comes down to is again a lack of discipline. There seems to be a running theme here. At least I'm staying fairly disciplined about this blog. This is my fifth post, something of an accomplishment for me. I've had a few blogs before this, but never managed to get past a fourth post. Focusing on poker helps, as it gives me something concrete to talk about. Having eleven people comment on my last post helps a lot too. I'm a sucker for encouragement, but I guess I made that pretty apparent in the blog's title. Speaking of encouragement, I want to give a quick e-hug to Blu, whose blog you can see listed in my All-New Sup-R-Cool Blog List over on the right. Blu sent me an example of how to edit the template to add the list, and it will be growing quickly soon, so I'm giving him a day or three to bask in the honor of being first and only on the list. I also figure he could use some good vibes beamed at him, as it sounds like he's having a rough week. When you're getting crappy cards, try to wish the good ones over towards him (unless he's at your table, of course). Nothing heals a broken heart like winning a few big pots with set over set or something. :-) That's all for our program tonight. Tune in to future episodes for more blogger thanx, the hand that I'm considering nicknaming "the poker slut", and a thorough discussion of appropriate poker music. All that and questions for my readers about PokerTracker, when we return.