pwnd

The defense department regrets to inform you that your sons are dead because they were stupid.
- Lt. (j.g.) Nick 'Goose' Bradshaw - Top Gun


Yesterday I had a very good day at the old 1/2 6 Max tables, scoring a very respectable 25.5BB in around 220 hands.

Today, I lost 41BB in a little under 150 hands.

Outstanding. Just out-freaking-standing.

It's not the loss that bothers me. I'll make that money back. The problem here is the nature in which I lost.

A basic breakdown of the breakdown:

-- Opponents making incredibly bad calls and connecting with miracle cards... alot.

-- Amazingly bad starting hands. I can't tell you how many times I looked down to see Q7o, K7o, J6s, 72o (man I was I tempted to play the snot out of the HAMMER today).

-- Incredibly stupid play by Your's Truely trying to convert above mentioned terrible starting hands into miracles.

Emphsis on the last point. I can't tell you what the Hell happened to my brain today, but when I saw that Jackleg to my right cold calling my raises with such illustrious holdings as 46o, or anything/anything s0000ted I started to go into some sort of feeding frenzy and suddenly I'm thinking I'm Daniel Negreanu! I start loosening up to punish this obviously terrible player, and about that time he starts connecting with some truely bizzare shit. I'll have AK and catch the king, bet the living hell out of it, he's raising and capping every street, the pots are absolute monsters, and he'll flip over some bullshit hand that had like 2 outs, one of which he of course caught on the river. Even if he caught it sooner, his "bet everything and raise everything else" style of play had me throwing chips in hoping it was one of those times where he had dick. Finally the table broke up and we were heads up. Once heads up, I was beating him handily, and I was looking forward to pounding him to dust, but then others showed up and I had to tighten back up. I just left and looked for fishier waters.

Unfortunately, the fish were baby pirhanas.

Baby Pirhanas in Shit Creek.

... and they ate my paddle.

Here's another nice side benefit of covering up my stack sizes. I knew I was losing. I knew that I was down. I had no idea how much, so I just kept playing, hoping that the damage wasn't too bad.

I didn't tilt until after I had closed out of Party and checked the damage on PokerTracker. I shouted, I bitched, I tossed F-Bombs like they were going out of style.

But I didn't play any poker while doing that... And that probably ended up saving me alot of money.

As for my completely mindless play, though, I wish I had the answer. I really won't know what went wrong until I break it down in PokerTracker. Of course, I'm at work, so that won't happen until tomorrow. My gut feeling is that I played very, very poorly. Perhaps PokerTracker will show differently. I think the specific failures for me were:

-- Assuming raises from opponents were bullshit.

-- Failure to get away from hands like AQo or KJo when the board is raggy but the betting is wild.

-- Playing hands like KJo out of position

-- Playing hands that have high implied odds on shorthanded tables.

In other news... My wife and I were trying to figure out something we could go and do together. Since she and I work opposing schedules, we don't get a lot of time together, so in an effort to "go out" at least once a week, her and I joined a bowling league. Last time I was in a bowling league was around 12 years ago. Back then, my average was around 175.

I've retired my old ball (a Gyro I) for a new ball (an Ebonite Stinger low particle) and have spent about 25 games trying to figure out the now impressive curve I've been able to throw. The old Gyro was back when bowling ball designers were just learning about balanced cores and using gyroscopic procession to effect the ball travel. The Gyro, though owner of a catchy name, really didn't have much in "balanced core" technology, relying mostly on friction to make a curve. In any event, I've found that, not only can I not come to grips with the curve on this ball yet, I am so completely out of shape that, believe it or not, my right leg can't support the weight of my fat ass when I squat for the delivery. After about 30 frames, I can hardly walk. Looks like I'm going to be doing alot of lower body exercises this summer! I'm sure also that the fatigue I'm suffering from this is effecting my accuracy.

Anyway, we were going to be on the Tuesday night league, but when we showed up on Monday (after the Monday leagues were done) for practice, the manager there wanted to know if we wanted to fill a team for the Monday night league. We agree to, and instead of practice, we "post bowl" our three games for the league's first day.

My scores were 110, 256 and 157.

Talk about streaky!

A nice feature of being a part of a league there is that they give you a card good for 3 free games of bowling a day for the entire week. Or this WOULD be a nice feature, except that the bowling center doesn't open until 3:00pm. I have to be at work by 1:15pm. Figures. I think they're open until midnight, though, so I'll stop by there after work and put in a few frames. I need the practice.

110? WTF?