Introducing… Mean Gene, who wrote a great post about luck–all written in the context of poker, of course.

Damn. Got killed last night. -17.4BB/100 hands in 140 minutes. -21BB total. Yeesh. It was a lot like the previous session where a suckout king would call pre-flop raises and post-flop bets to make his hand on the turn or river with rags. It’s frustrating as hell. Here are some examples:

I have rockets in the SB. Tight player (UTG+1) 2-bets. Suckout king (MP1) calls with A2o. When I 3-bet, the raiser and A2o call. The flop gives A2o a gutshot straight draw and he calls my bet after the raiser folds. The turn shows a flush draw and the pot does not give him the right odds to call. The river makes his straight, but not my flush. I bet the flush and he raises with the straight. I don’t have the good sense to fold and lose 5BB.

I have cowboys in the SB. Suckout king (MP1) calls and his fishy friend (MP2) calls with 73s. I 2-bet, BB folds, the two callers call. Flop gives 73s a gutshot straight draw and the pot is paying the odds. Both of them call my bet. Turn makes the straight and 73s raises. I figure him for A6, but fear the straight, and just call. River shows a 10 and I check to the straight. I lose 4.5BB.

Pocket tens in the BB. Suckout king (MP1) calls with 76o. His fishy friend (MP2), the button, and SB call. Flop gives me a gutshot straight draw and 76o and open-ended straight draw. I check and 76o bets. Pot is paying the odds and I call. Turns shows an ace. With two overcards on the board, I check to 76o and call his bet. River makes his straight, but not mine. I check, call, and lose 3BB. I played this hand wrong. I should have check-raised to figure out if he had the queen. On the other hand, I’ve seen this guy go to the river a lot. Here are some of his stats: VP$IP: 58%, Went to SD: 42%. So would he have folded? I don’t know.

I lost another 3BB to suckout king when my straight flush draw didn’t turn up the straight or the flush, and SK went to the showdown with lowest pair, even with the board showing a pair and two overcards.

Anyway, you can see that I lost about half of the money on suckouts. Another quarter of it to bad play/suckouts. The rest I lost on premium hands not connecting on the flop.

If this keeps up much longer I’m going to lose my bankroll within the week.

Well, I just lost $500. When I put it like that, it’s a holy crap moment. I mean that’s something close to a month’s wages from my “real” “job”.

—Poker Penguin

So this is why you need a 300 big bets in your bankroll. It was the weekend of the runner-runner on Party, and my lungs are still full of water after repeatedly drowning in the river. You’d think playing 4 tables would take the edge off of the losses, but wins were few and far between on this awful weekend.

—HDouble

I think you can see the shoe prints on my left buttock… because I got my ass kicked yesterday at the tables. Geez, thank goodness for the Phish shows. In the middle of a horrible run of cards… my bankroll disappearing before my eyes… I desperately needed a break. Phish pulled me away from the tables and outside!

—Pauly

The good news is that for the majority of the times that I lost any more than 1SB, I was sucked out on. The costliest loss was my flush that I referenced in my pervious entry. I was drawing dead after the flop, but what were the chances that two of us flop an A high flush with him having the exact card that could beat me? So I guess what I’m finding out is that at the turn I was in the lead, many times quite dramatically, only to have the river get me. Frustrating.

—Chris Halverson

So there you have it.

I did a similar analysis of my play after my losses tonight, and even though I lost 7.76BB/100 hands over the past 1141 hands, my stats were still decent. I put money in the pot just 18.58% of the time, and the cards wouldn’t connect or I’d get the worst suckouts in poker history. Fools calling pre-flop raises with unsuited rags making three of a kind on the river or two pair on the turn.

Skill is sexy. Luck is sexier.

And with that I must finally acknowledge that yes, there are poker gods, and they have forsaken the poker bloggers–at least for the last half week. Praise be to the poker gods. May you bless us with rockets and cowboys and fishy fish.

My tournament skills are non-existent. Until I develop some, I’ll be better off participating in the free rolls and nothing else.

On the plus side, I made up for my losses last night and made my bonus. I think I strongly prefer the 1/2 tables so far. It’s too bad my bankroll is ill-equipped to handle any massive swings.

I lost $84.72 in 34.4 hours of play, at a rate of $2.46 an hour, or 4.16BB/100 hands. Wow. That’s almost a quarter of my bankroll in one week. On top of that, I had withdrawn some cash from my Party account, leaving me with about 60% of my bankroll by week’s end.

Well that called for desperate measures. I took all my money and opened a Multi account to get the 20% bonus.

My first session at the .50/1 table was awful. I moved on to the 1/2 table and things were almost as bad. Just when I nearly used up my initial buy-in, things turned around and I ended up +$7 at that table and -$3 overall.

I then decided to play 40 more hands to qualify for tomorrow morning’s freeroll and lost another -$7. The unfortunate thing about that session is that I folded to a $4 call on the turn after my opponents raised and re-raised with their nut straights. I should have called. I was holding two pair, the pot was paying slightly better than my odds of catching one of my eight outs on the river, and it was a huge pot. Fuck. The river would have given me a boat, beating the two straights and netting me half my buy-in. Bad poker play. But at least I’m registered for the tourney tomorrow, and I’m just a dozen hands away from making my bonus. It’ll be good to start the week up.

As for the difference between the .50/1 tables and the 1/2 tables, I can’t say I notice much difference yet. The swings are bigger, but it seems like the 1/2 players respect strong bets/raises/check-raises more, even if they’re every bit as likely to play any two cards as at the lower limit. I’ll share more if anything occurs to me.