CR took off early. He’d been up since 6AM or so, and it’s amazing that he showed up at all.

    This week  Cumulative  Average
CR    -$0.15      +$1.20   +$0.11
EM    -$5.00      -$6.10   -$0.51
ER    +$0.75     +$14.30   +$1.30
JB    -$1.90      -$6.55   -$0.60
JC    +$1.35     +$14.50   +$1.32
Me    +$4.95      -$6.60   -$0.55

JB and I continue to tie for last place, with me taking the shame of the lowest record by a nickel in both the cumulative and average. I could have swapped with him if it hadn’t been for the last hand of the night. I had top pair and ER flopped a set (or so she says). I called her flop raise and check-folded the turn after realizing that I shouldn’t have called the raise with my kicker and no good draws, but that was enough to put me under the 2x mark for the night. Can’t win ’em all, as they say. I’d like to think that my play was better tonight than on most nights. I was sufficiently aggressive with winning hands and called down bluffs. In fact, I think most of us have gotten more creative with our play. Whether for good or bad, we probably don’t have enough evidence to make any kind of conclusion.

JC continues to hold onto his top spot, but now ER is close behind. Not sure if she’s necessarily playing better, but she’s certainly trying out more aggression and if the numbers mean anything to anyone, I think it’s working. The one thing she may want to do is figure out on the turn/river whether she wants to keep throwing chips in the pot or cut her losses when it’s clear that someone has her beaten and is unlikely to fold.

Of course, being a weekly game we all tend to know one another to a certain extent, and it’s difficult to take the skills we are developing and apply them to online and B&M play. I honestly believe that anyone in our group is better than most people I’ve encountered online and in my limited B&M experience, but really, they all ought to get out there and pound the tables at Party to sharpen up their play against the fish.

They’ve revoked the bonus. They didn’t just expire it, they took it back from anyone who used the code. There’s a consolation 10% retroactive bonus with no hand requirements, so I get fifty bucks for my troubles. That’s nowhere near as good. Ten percent I could make on my own fairly easily. One hundred percent would be tough. Oh well. Time to cash out my deposit.

All the reasons for cashing out of my online poker account remain true. But that Empire reload bonus tipped things in the right direction for me to make time for poker. I’ve only played just over a hundred hands, but so far I’ve made a few big bets here and there, playing 1/2 and $25 PL, and I’m 1/25th of the way to my rake refund. I checked PT to see how much I’ve paid in rake, and it’s a whopping $700+ since I started keeping track back in mid-March. The way I see it, Party/Empire/Multi owe this to me.

Tonight I got more than my fair share of playable hands–oh yes, I’m being set up (once again) for the fall. But while you’ve got the advantage, you’ve gotta push it as far as it will go. That said, the 1/2 table I spent the most time at tonight was tough. Some good players there, which is not usually the case at the Party skins. But this late at night, I’ve tended to notice the limit tables are full of maniacs or sharks. I won some big pots, but I also paid a lot into some pots I didn’t win. After a few of those, I decided to change gears and move on to the pot limit tables. There I did much better, offsetting my short-run losses at the 1/2 table. The two big pots I won were those where my victim flopped the nut straight or flush draw and decided to raise on the draw that never completed. My gut tells me that this is not a good strategy. And as HD will tell you, at a low-limit table on Party (or any aquarium), with a family pot at stake, this is definitely not optimal strategy. Of course, I was playing PL and after the drawfish raised, it became heads up. So all you poker strategists out there, if you have any thoughts on semi-bluffing with a raise in PL or NL where you’re unlikely to get more than one or two callers, let me know. Since you have a greater range of what the bet could be, this certainly does open up possibilities. I suspect that these will depend heavily on your read of the other guy’s hand and betting style.

This brings me to the last thought of the night. I really need to mix up my play. Not to the extent where I find myself severely short stacked, but every so often I need to throw in something the table hasn’t seen before.