Diary of a Poker Slut

If I Had A Hammer

2005-02-02T21:47:00.000-08:00

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

2004-12-23T00:04:00.000-08:00

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

2004-12-19T01:58:00.000-08:00

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

2004-11-17T23:45:00.000-08:00

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

2004-11-14T21:04:00.000-08:00

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

2004-11-13T00:12:00.000-08:00

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

2004-11-09T23:59:00.000-08:00

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.

Sailor on the Seas of Cheese

2004-11-06T01:58:00.000-08:00

I'm going to try to make this short, but I wanted to get something new up quick since The Blogfather himself just pimped me. I thought I was made when his button-men were pimping me, but I think getting pimped on his page makes me an official blog ho. So I've been thinking about what to say in my first post since being hailed by google's top pick for "poker blog", hoping to cash in a tournament or something so I had something to talk about, but I feel like a figurehead on a ship. When I'm cresting the variance wave it feels really good, but when I ride it down it can be a real slap in the face. Anyway, the string of 59o hands (seriously, like elenty trillion in a row, I think... I'll have to check PokerTracker) has given me time to think about some of the comments I've gotten. F'rinstance, the other day I was jokingly saying something like, "If I could take that to the $5/$10 limit tables ... I might start to make some real money." I thought I was kinda giggling when I said it, but SirFWALGMan (what the fwalg does that mean anyway?) said to me, "Take it slow sister Blogger! The 5/10 limit tables are NOTHING like the 5 cent tables." Which, of course, I knew, which is why I was giggling. But then he went on to reiterate something I'd heard before, something like "Your bankroll should be at least 300xBB to play." I've learned most of what I know about poker from reading poker blogs (not naming any names ;-) the last few months, so that number has become almost gospel to me. That's why I'm playing at the 5c/10c tables (my "bankroll", such as it is, wavers between $40 and $60 on PokerStars, which may help explain where I was during the last blogger tournament) instead of the 25c/50c tables. Well, at least that's what I tell myself. I've got a little more self-control than Matt Damon in Rounders, but the reason my bankroll hovers is because I keep "taking a shot" at 25c/50c, not to mention playing in tournaments. Needless to say, I've not yet won big on either of those gambles, but I haven't lost big either. I keep coming tantalizingly close to cashing in tournaments, and every now and then I get my money back plus a little. I actually do pretty well in $5.50 SnGs, something like a 140% ROI for my first ten, but then I lost two in a row and realized that my bankroll wasn't in any shape to handle the variance on those either. This is a paragraph from the future! Well, I said I wanted to make this quick, but I never make anything quick. I had signed up for a freeroll at 2am for my weekly consignment of MeatGrinder, but I was in the middle of writing so my heart wasn't really in it. I called with 98 of hearts on the first hand from late position, along with almost everyone else at the table. The flop came 962 with two hearts and it checks around to me, so I bet the pot. Two calls, then the small blind raises twice my bet. Well, I was feeling stubborn, and as it was a freeroll I didn't have much at stake, so I pushed. The rockets (as it turned out) in the small blind called, I hit the flush, and suddenly I'm almost tripled up. Gotta love the freerolls. A while later I ended up all-in and covering three stacks with an AK. The other hands were (I kid you not) Q5o, A6, and 66. The pair of 6s held and I ended up with just under the starting amount left... I guess I probably shouldn't have called there either, 3:1 odds for big slick seemed pretty good, especially playing against three almost completely random hands. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, 300BB. Wow. I'm not a very patient girl, as a rule, and it just seems like it's going to take forever to go up a level. PokerTracker and a calculator gives me a rough guess of 120 hours of play. I guess that's not exactly forever and ever and ever or anything, but it's close. I'd probably just buckle down and play, but my personal variance doesn't seem to extend more than 100BB or so, which makes me wonder just where this arbitrary 300 number comes from. Does anyone out there have personal experience with a downward slide so long it actually cost 300BB? Well, it's almost 4am here and I've about had it, but keep those cards and letters coming, kids. My friends and my therapist all thank you for "providing an acceptable outlet" for my poker-related thoughts, and I can't wait to find out who's lost 300BB, not to mention who's reading this. See ya at the penny tables.

October Surprise

2004-11-01T23:24:00.001-08:00

Well, it's official -- I was officially profitable for the month of October. As I've said, I'm not *very* profitable. According to PokerTracker, I'm making 16.29 big ones per hour. Unfortunately, I spend most of the month playing 1c/2c NL, so 16.29 BBs isn't even going to buy me a pack of cigarettes. Of course, you have to play where your bankroll will let you. I've still only invested a total of $100 in on-line poker, and I'm surprised nearly every day when I see more than my initial investment is still left. I really thought I'd be broke by now. How many players stick in their $50 initial deposit and piss it all away in a week, or even a day? How many of those come back and do it again? Through October 21, I was fighting the huge variance on the NL micro-limit tables and getting terribly frustrated. I would have three, maybe four winning sessions in a row, pulling down somewhere between a dollar and three dollars per two dollar buy in. The problem on those tables was it only took one bad beat to break me. I'd lose my two bucks, along with whatever profit I'd managed to amass, to one bad beat. That's where the leaks would start. I suppose that is the moment I should have walked away, gone to watch the newest episode of Queer Eye or something, but I never did. I'd buy back in, hit the tables a bit more agressively, and string out at least one and sometimes two more losing sessions. The 5c/10c NL tables were even worse. My agressive style, which served me so well at the 1c/2c level, would bust me out fast at 5c/10c. I only played three sessions there and busted out my five bucks all three times. Maybe I just could adjust to the idea of causing a 30c raise with a JTs in late position instead of a 6c raise, or maybe I just couldn't get used to pushing all-in for five bucks instead of two. I don't know. All I know was that I was frustrated with lose play at the lowest level and unable to move up successfully, so I switched to what I had previously seen as the boring tables. I sat myself down at 2c/4c limit hold'em to see what would happen. What happened was that I could not lose. I'd played some micro-limit, particularly during the slow moments at work. Limit seemed mostly mindless to me. If you have the best hand, you bet. If you have seven or eight outs to beat the current best hand, especially in late position, you raise (or bet, if it's been checked to you). If you're in first position and you bet, you're obligated to either (a) fold to a raise or (b) bet out every round from there on out. And when you don't hit the flop, you fold fast. Those four simple rules had kept me profitable without forcing me to think at all, making it easy to switch back and forth between real work and poker. And almost every time I played, I made money. What surpised me was that, with a bit more concentration than I'd given it while slacking off from my job, I was nearly unbeatable. I made $4.22 in my first 46 minute session. Of course, this doesn't sound like much, but keep in mind that the big bet was only 4c. That comes out to something like 36 BB/hr. Mere seconds after doing that math in my head, I went searching for a 5c/10c limit table, which is where I'd really made my score. Despite a bad run this weekend (four losing sessions in a row) I've still come out ahead 13 of my last 24 sessions. Over 675 hands, I've posted an average of nearly 3c/hand. Not an amazing total, I have to admit, but just think if I could take that to the $5/$10 limit tables and I might start to make some real money. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I'm ready for that yet. I've 50/50 on my two attempted sessions at 25c/50c limit. I'm still $1.65 up at that level, but it's not enough to make my confident I can win there. In fact, it mostly makes me certain that (with enough bad luck) I could lose my whole stake playing there. So I'll continue to make forays onto that level every once in a while. If I have a good session and I can afford to lose my buy-in, I'll give it a shot, but I'm not married to the concept of moving up another level this month. I'd like to send a quick shout-out to my first two blogger peeps out there. My first comments, from Blu over at One in a Blu Moon, seems to post somewhat infrequently but is significantly more successful than myself. More recently, I got a comment from SirFWALGMan at Online Poker Thoughts that complimented my writing style, surely the quickest way to a girl's heart. You can thank him for tonight's post, as he left me with the momentary feeling that people would keep reading this as long as I kept writing. Anyway, if either of you guys (or anyone else for that matter) can explain how exactly I set up a blog list like most of you have, I'd be most appreciative and even put your blogs near the top of the list. Let me know if you have any insight. I think for now I'd better head off to bed. Next episode will feature some quick analysis of my tournament play for the month of October, a story about the people who really taught me how hold'em works, and (if you're lucky) a brief foray into my plans for world domination. Until then, just pretend that every time you're playing, I'll be there sweating you... or at least making you sweat. ;-)

Warm Blooded, Check It and See

2004-10-25T21:22:00.000-07:00

So I've been running... well, not hot exactly, but definitely not cold. Maybe warm is the best description. I guess I'm just riding the variance wave, but I've been making some changes in my game so it's hard not to take it personally. Last Sunday I had my biggest cashout in a tournament, and I've been slightly profitable ever since. Of course, this doesn't really mean anything, but it does give me a bit of confidence. I have vague hopes that some "real poker players" will be reading this at some point, so I should probably specify exactly what I mean by "profitable." I'd say I'm playing for peanuts, but that severely underestimates the cost of peanuts. Until just recently, I had mainly confined my exploits to the 1c/2c blind NLHE tables at PokerStars. Before that I played play-money poker for six months. Have you ever sat in on a play money table? Really? For how long? Uh-huh, that's what I thought. It's a totally ridiculous concept, any game theorist will tell you that. You can't have a wagering game for play money, not if there is any element of competitiveness at the table. To paraphrase one of those "real poker players" I mentioned (more on this later), it's like an existential meat grinder, times infinity. Everybody wants to see every flop, at any price. People going all-in like fireworks over your head. If you raise, you'd damn well better mean it, and be willing to defend it with all your chips against three or four people. You want to talk about heartbreak? I used to sigh when I picked up the hilton sisters, because it was about 10:1 I'd lose all my chips. The best bet was to pick your moments... 4am was usually a good one. By that time, the thirteen-year-olds and drunks had mostly gone to bed or passed out, and the only people left were those of us who were serious about the game, but dead flat broke as well. I learned a lot between 4am and 6am, and I wish I'd been blogging then so I could go back and look up some familiar faces, see if they ever funded up and how they did. Anyway, last February I started going to a friend's poker night. The first time he funded me, and I flirted my way into second place. I immediately realized that these guys had no patience, which is why none of them got my phone number that first night. But second place was $50, which was conveniently enough the minimum deposit at PartyPoker, where I'd spent the most time in the play money rooms. I have to admit that my initial plan had been to play in as many tournaments as I could before that initial deposit wore off. I figured if I wasn't ready for a one-table tournament, I wasn't ready for a satellite, and if I wasn't ready for that I'd certainly make a fool of myself in a real tournament. Assuming I could scrape up the cash. But then fate entered the picture (insert spooky music track later) in the form of a rejection message from PartyPoker. For some reason, they rejected my NetTeller transaction. Oddly, they have continued rejecting the same transaction, and offering me a 50% deposit bonus, every month every since. Go figure. Anyway, I was forced to try my second option, which was Paradise Poker. Why Paradise? Well, I'd been doing reasonably well in their Sunday freeroll tournament (oh plase, Paradise, please return my chance to win a chipset!), Unfortunately, they didn't seem to like my transaction either. I never did hear any more about that. So, despairingly I turned to plan C, JetSet Poker. "Whhaaaa?" you say to yourself (or perhaps even out lout). Well, um... I really like my icon on there, but I hardly ever played because there were more 13yos then I could handle (oooh, rad grafix d00d). So I started watching the real money tables and I quickly decided that their tourments did pay out enough and their cash games were too sparsely populated to be able to find a good table. I was sad about this at the time, but resolved to lose this found money before I went shopping with it, I decided to go to my last resort: PokerStars. Why was PokerStars at the bottom of my list? Well, I was kinda pissed at them. They let you choose your own icon, you know, but they rejected the first one I sent in. *I* didn't think it was pornographic, but I guess they disagreed. Anyway, I did the play-money thing there sometimes as well, but I always played with a blank face which felt so boring. I feel naked without my make-up, in a manner of speaking. Anyway, I went to deposit the money there and bam, in like flint. $50 ready and waiting. No deposit bonus because they hadn't offered one so far as I could tell. Couldn't really complain as I'd never really expected to clear the necessary points. I immediately ran to the SnGs and found the cheapest one, a five plus two bit 9-player NLHE tourney. "What the hell," I figured, "best time to start losing is now," and signed up. The best thing about PokerStars SnGs is that they take about two minutes to fill up. Before I even had a chance for second thoughts, I'd have probably bailed, but suddenly we were seated with less than a minute before play. I have to admit, I was somewhat terrified the whole game, refusing to gamble without a clear edge. I captured blinds twice, going all-in ATs and AKo. On the bubble, I called the short-stack down preflop with a pair of 9s and won the race, knocking myself into the money. Unfortately, I got cocky, bluffed with the worst of it, and was blinded all-in and all-out on the next hand. Still, I made a profit: third place in a 5.50 SnG is something like 9.50, so I was 4.00 ahead. Still, not enough of a profit to make it to another SnG as a freeroll. I was wondering how I could make a 30% profit on $4 when I discovered my newest addiction: the penny tables.

Beginnings

2004-10-24T22:54:00.000-07:00

The clock is wrong, at least the one I'm looking at is. It's far later than I'm pretending it is. I know I'm too tired to be playing poker, but I'm not sure if I'm too high to be writing. Beginnings are always hard for me, but I remember the first time I was called a poker slut. I was still in college and I didn't even know how to play, not really. I definitely had no clue how important it was going to be to me now, I thought it was a stupid game. We played five-card draw and there was no betting, just an ante of sorts. I didn't have much of a stake to bring to the table because a friend had dragged me from a club to this party and I was really more prepared for dancing, but the guys at the table convinced me it would be okay. I got really lucky the first few hands, or at least the guys convinced me I was lucky. Of course they also convinced me that you had to do a shot when you won a hand, and on top of everything else I'd done that night losing the next few hands didn't seem so bad. The guys were nice, though, and even let me ante my jewelry before things got too serious. Of course, things got serious anyway. I don't remember much of the game, but I imagine I started to get the hang of bluffing and got carried away. I was pretty agressive when I was in school. Anyway, my friend who'd dragged me there found where we were playing just as I'd lost my initial stake. Apparently I was willing to take out some pretty big markers to get back into the game, but she pulled me out before I lost my dignity. Of course it didn't take too long for some girl that was vaguely attached to one of the frat boys to hear about the game. I'm sure she'd blown off her boyfriend's poker game to go get high with the DJ downstairs or something, but apparently she wasn't too happy with some other girl playing with him. The whole thing got blown way out of proportion, of course, but by the time the rumour mill was done with the story a bunch of people at school were calling me "the poker slut." Well, whatever. It's not like I was actually going to blow the guy anyway. Maybe I would have felt different if he'd actually taught me how to play. Now I've got to learn the hard way.