“And every so called meeting with his so called superior
Is a humiliating kick in the crotch.”

It took me a couple days, but I’ve finally caught up on my limited poker reading. There are definitely other blogs out there that are worthwhile reads, but I think I’m running out of hours in the day to devote to reading blogs. I used to multi-task between reading and playing, but I’ve been trying to do a better job of focusing on the game at all times.

I think there’s also more content these days. I don’t remember for certain, but I’d say it started with three things occurring around the same time: 1) Iggy going pro, 2) the nightly NL table, and 3) the Vegas trip. So, okay, there were more frequent uber-posts and quickies, tales of the hammer taking down huge pots, and 30-odd trip reports posted as multi-part series. But I think Vegas was also the catalyst for gelling the “poker blog community” into a more coherent idea. Suddenly your audience had a lot more faces and shared experiences to go with the names, so you felt the compulsion to post more frequently and write better posts to impress and measure up to your peers.

I didn’t go to Vegas. I don’t have to impress or measure up to anyone.

—

Not a whole lot of online poker this weekend. Friday night/Saturday morning at Commerce shot my Saturday in the ass, and then I headed out Saturday evening to Hustler with CR and ER from the weekly game. HDouble and his buddy showed up a bit later. This being CR and ER’s third live casino experience (I guess I’m a veteran with seven), we sat at 3/6, hoping the rake and tokes wouldn’t make it too much of a -EV proposition.

I sat at a table with CR and stayed in a holding pattern for most of the night. A few pots here and there left me at even or a bit above even, but I wasn’t getting cards or catching flops for the most part. Then I started getting dealt big pocket pairs and watched them go down to 56 (flopped a boat), J9 (top pair on the flop, two pair on the turn), AX (I had KK and the flop had an ace), etc. I also completely misplayed two or three hands where I failed to raise to protect my hand. Welcome to weak-tight city. Population: one. By the time we got up to eat, I was down 7.5BB. I felt okay about that since I’d lost 2-4BB a hand with the big pockets. If I was only down 7.5BB, I must have been doing something right.

As was the case in Vegas, ER went on a big run from being 10BB in the hole to being 17BB in the black. Great job. CR was up just over a big bet. He could have posted a bigger win, but he lost several big bets by bluffing to the showdown with 92o in LP. He also left too many bets on the table with winning hands–like checking the turn and river with trip Aces (?!).

The food at the Hustler is cheap and fairly decent. Poor service, though. True to form, I ordered their beef dip sandwich, which isn’t nearly as good as the Texas Beef Dip at Bun Boy in Baker and nowhere near as good as the Prime Directive at Mandalay Bay’s Raffles Cafe. I’d say the primary problem is that they skimp a bit with the beef.

CR and ER took off after that and I went over to check up on HDouble. At one point earlier in the evening I saw him turn the nut boat after some idiot had flopped trips with 46. There were a lot of yellow chips headed HDouble’s way as Mr. Junk Trips complained about the 2-outer catch on the turn. Can’t say I felt bad for him. After the meal, HDouble was still up, but not quite as much as he had been with the boat.

I went off to play the 2/5 NL game. I think I won only two pots. Once when I shut out everyone with my two pair on the turn, and another where I flopped a boat (44 with AA4QX board) and managed to extract some value from a Fossilman wannabe (no glasses, though) who called preflop, bet the flop, and check-called the turn and river with… Q4. I made a mistake with this latter hand by underbetting, but this was partially due to my not being accustomed to keeping track of no limit pots in live play and, more importantly, not trading all my whites for yellows when first sitting down (I still had $20-30 in whites). I underestimated the size of my stack while betting, and therefore did not bet enough to get to that fine line between getting paid off and doubling up. After that I missed some flops and got blinded down a bit before I decided to get up with my $80 profit. Between that and my 3/6 results, I barely covered my food and drink expenses for the night. But that stuff comes out of my discretionary cash and not the bankroll, so … a win’s a win, even if it’s less than minimum wage.

It’s amazing how bad some of these players are in both the limit and no limit games. There’s definitely money to be won in limit, but at the low limits I was playing, any wins would barely offset the combined effect of the beats, drops, and tokes. I’d have to be really on my game to make it worthwhile, and after four or five hours with a sore ass, it’s hard for me to be on my game. No limit’s a bit better for offsetting these other factors, though it does put your stack at risk. I think I’ll have to resign myself to playing no limit at the B&M’s until I get the bankroll up to handle 6/12. This will take a very, very long time.

—

After two nights of live poker, I was beat. I ended up watching a movie when I got home from the casino, then slept for 11 hours and shot Sunday in the ass, too. You can guess what happened this morning. 3 for 3.

At some point Sunday evening I started jonesing for some online poker action. I’d emptied the Empire account with the expectation of being able to IGMPAY into Party for the $750,000 Bad Beat Jackpot, but Party locked me out for “inappropriate chat” and so I forgot about it for the weekend. When I finally decided to reload at Empire, IGMPAY was having technical issues. So I watched the chat at the NL Blogger table wistfully while trying to get IGMPAY to do my bidding. I even took advantage of PokerRoom’s Neteller Insta-Cash fee-free transfer to try to use the backdoor to fund Empire. Didn’t work. Finally IGMPAY decided to stop being a bitch and actually let me deposit some money into Empire and I was set. By this point most of the Bloggers had already left. Won two big pots that had me all-in (one was a lucky 2-outer on the river, one was a good calldown of a bluff) and got up with 5x my buy-in. That hasn’t happened to me in a while, and it felt pretty damn good. I should rename this blog Two Big Pots.

Oh. Could this post get anymore boring?

So I’ve come to the realization that either I’m not comfortable playing live poker, or I can’t talk and play at the same time. This is terrible for my table image, and certainly kills the camaraderie aspect that is key when sitting at a table half full of bloggers. If you’re going to sit at a -EV table, you should have fun, right? Eh. I’ll have to work on this at the LA Poker Classic.