That's What I Get

Decided that life is too short today and made a bid on the 1/2 tables today after spinning my wheels on the 50/1 tables for about 30 minutes. Left the cheap tables down $2.

And dumped a good $25 on the 1/2 tables. Just couldn't put anything at all together today, and I could only play for about an hour and a half, so no chance to make a run at a comeback.

I couldn't quite get comfortable on any of the 1/2 tables I was on. The first one I bought in on was ultra-tight. I sat there for about 15 minutes and MAYBE saw 4 showdowns. I bailed on that one and picked up a live table. There were some pretty loose/aggressive folks on there, and there was one guy immediately to my left who would take any raise personally and make it his duty to re-raise you. By all rights, this was the place to be! Any good hand I would want raised would be dutifully taken care of by "oh, a raise eh?" boy and the table was loose enough where I could reasonably expect at least one chaser who would be happy to cold call 2 bets trying to fill a draw.

Only trouble was, they often filled the draw. I got smacked around pretty bad with made hands getting drawn out on for huge pots and when my good hands would hold up, I'd get no action. The proverbial "one step forward, two steps back" sort of day.

The second table was almost a carbon copy. The nut job on this table was in seat 3 and I was in seat 8, so this gave me some room to navigate, but again, anything that stood up saw little action.

So, I guess my thinking that trying to make that "magical" $400 mark (which I was about $16 from) was silly and I should move up now brought forth a Most Holy and Apostolic Smackdown upon thee.

I will therefore stay in 1/2 anyway. Screw it. If I get crushed down to $300, I'll back off... Otherwise, I will continue to fire away. I will not, however, play 2 tables at once until I get my bankroll back to 200BB...

I've been working the last 4 days, so I have been too busy demotivated to supply those promised stats... I'll break down the important highlights here the next day or so. For those who have been following along since early on, you'll remember that I was concerned about how often pocket aces would lose. We'll explore those stats along with which hands are the big winners for me and which ones are sucking my will to live. Also on tap is an invitation to analyze my pre-flop and post flop play. I think I'm slipping into some bad decision making, and I'd like to get some advice, and I don't feel like doing this at 2+2 because they're going to start asking for specific hands. I can't pin my decision making to specific hands, but I'll try to pick some of my questionable calls and post them up. I seem to be better at giving advice then following my own!

On the New Opportunities front, I have made contact with a couple of people who work in the dispatch office in Phoenix. Seems they're working on trying to get a new union contract. They need one. This is a major airline and their starting pay is what I make here after a year. Well, okay, about $1000 a year more, but who's counting. This is okay news in that I'm not going to take a pay CUT, but better news in that, for an airline that is considered a "major carrier", their pay is far and away lower then the industry average, so it can only go up from there. A telling sign though is that they're now in Federal Arbitration, so I guess they couldn't see eye to eye on some things. America West is into the Government for quite a few million in Air Transportation Stabilization Board loans, which they'll have paid off by 2007. I'm thinking what'll happen is, they'll settle for little or no raise, if the company will stipulate to a contract that either ends by 2007 or is amendable at that point. Another annoying thing I found out was they have an 18 month probationary period for new hires. Since most of the guys at Cactus have a fair bit of seniority, I'm willing to wager that that won't change, but there's still hope. I'd be more confident in America West surviving the requisite year and a half then I am in the place I work at now surviving that long.

I think I've pretty much decided that if they offer me a position out there I'm going to pull the trigger and do it. Life is too short to freeze my nuts off for 7 months at a time here on the Frozen Tundra, and I need to find a place that I can build a career at so I can settle down and start a family. It'd be nice to actually feel confident enough to buy a house, too.