A Race of 500 Miles Is Decided In Inches

I get the feeling lately that I'm pre-dispositioned to lose at poker.

Of course, I don't believe this, but it seems that, in spite of my best efforts at playing solid (for a rookie) poker, I always manage to find a way to lose money!

But this post isn't going negative. I refuse to be beat down by bad beats and miracle suckouts. Instead, I will relish the knowlege that I have the tools and the mental (and intestinal, if you will) fortitude to come out victorious.

Last night started as me just poking my head into Party to throw a couple of hands of .50/1 No Fold'em and hide away from the child my wife was babysitting. Since I had been up since 3:45am, by the time I got home, went to dinner and returned, I was juiced. Of course, once I got going, the second wind kicked in. I decided to give another S&G tourney a try, sticking like a saint to advice given to me about how to deal with the low buyin tourneys.

Early in the tourney, I broke out my portable spade and dug a foxhole to hide in while the blinds were low, and watched the fireworks. Sure enough, there were 3 or 4 people intent on winning the whole thing in one bet, so before 20 hands were dealt, we were down to 6 or so. The the tables turned ultra-tight as people suddenly realized that they were either low on chips or so long on chips that they could fold their way to the money. I took that opportunity to steal a few pots and blinds and managed to set myself up in pretty good chip shape, so I went back into hiding until it got down to the final four.

Then the cards dried up on me.

Long story short, I'm at about T650 in chips, and the other chip stacks were on the low 1000's, with one guy up around T2800. I get AQo three off the button and figure it's time to make the stand. I bet out and get two callers. Since I'm at work and don't have the hand history, I can't remember exactly what came up on the flop, but bottom line is I push all-in and I get one caller, the other guy folds out. The other guy was holding a JTo and managed to river out a straight to send me packing in 4th place. I was astonished. I put the hand through the hand analyzer at Two Dimes. Preflop, I was a 60% favorite to win. After the flop, I improved slightly to 62%, and by the turn that went to over 80%. And I lose. Not exactly qualifying for a "bad beat", but is sure sucked sufficient amounts of ass.

So, back to the .50/1 table, where hdouble and I both enjoy an entertaining game of "bait the calling station". Don't worry, we were good boys, we didn't chat about the hands were were playing. Anyway, I only played there for about 30 minutes, since my brain was going into fatigue induced shut down. Suffice to say, this was the worst possible time to not be able to stay at a table. I swear that if I could have just stayed, I would have been able to double my bankroll just playing that table. There were 6 people that would raise nothing and call everything. You could flop the obvious nuts and still get called to the river with 3 hanger-ons. I was a poker player's dream come true...

And I had to go to dreamland.

If I can remain in a resonably concious state this afternoon when I get home, I'll head back to the tables, but I will be alot more selective and observent of the table texture before I start throwing chips down. I gotta find that unicorn table of loose/passive callers again. It will be mine.

Oh yes, it will be mine.

More later. Gotta take one of those Stacker 2 Ephedra Free pills. Need caffeine, but I don't want to drink coffee to hit the dose required to keep me from falling into a coma. Gotta go Ephedra free because the Federal Government doesn't look too kindly at their dispatchers being jacked up on speed while making safety of flight decisions (imagine that).

Besides, Ephedra really trips me out. I get the shakes.