Guilt

The title of this post was going to be "Fun" but PhantomWife hasn't been having a lot of it lately, and because I have had a lot of fun playing poker (and writing about it) "Guilt" is more appropriate, I think.

I'd say we're going through fertility treatments in hopes of becoming PhantomParents, but in truth she's the only one having to deal with the nightly shots, and they're really bothering her now. I can't take them for her (I wish I could) and I feel kind of helpless and useless about the whole thing.

It doesn't help that she doesn't care for poker. And she's not wrong in thinking that my poker playing is eating into our time together.

To exacerbate matters, tonight I'm going to play in a tourney along with the WeHO ladies. It will be my first real-money experience outside of some very low-stakes poker played with friends from Baltimore.

So tomorrow night I will post about how I cleaned the house for PhantomWife earlier in the day, and the results from tonights tourney, in that order.

Okay, back to poker.

So the last two nights were pretty good nights

Bankroll status: 2.75M PSD -- 200 USD (New! Real World Only).

Thursday Night

....Was a very good night, at least at first. PhantomWife worked late, and I played NLHE until she got home around 9:30. I stopped around 9:45, up around 120K PSD for the session. (The session spanned two tables; the final table I was only there long enough to point Evil Denmother to the previous PhantomMut post and to suckout on some poor unsuspecting player. What could I do? Had 8/9 off, flopped the up-and-down nut straight draw, three diamonds on the board gave me a flush draw with the nine, and she goes all in. I knew she was protecting high pockets without a flush draw when she went all-in. I called, hit the flush, and felt like a dick for cashing out, but PhantomWife was calling.... And at least I'd announced it would be my last hand BEFORE the deal.)

So, by 10:45 PhantomWife is out like a light, I'm not sleepy, soooo.....

I'm not addicted to poker, not at all.

(**SOB!!!*** Yes I am! And play money poker at that!)

Ahem.

So anyway, I'm goofing around, not really making any money, not really losing any, and frankly not paying much attention. I hop from table to table as players come and go, not really getting a feel for anything except "these aren't places I really want to be." Finally around 1:00 (IIRC, writing this on lunch break the day after) I look up Evil Denmother who for once doesn't seem to have any of the Degenerate Cub Scouts with her; don't recognize anyone but her.

So not long after I sat down I catch pocket Tens in early position. I bet out something like 2400 (blinds 200/100). That's pretty much my standard "I have a hand I like" bet. Four calls. Flop is (IIRC) a 9 5 4 rainbow. Again, if I'm remembering my betting correctly I bet another 4 thousand into the pot, trying to get a feel for what's out there. Two calls. Turn is (I think) another 4. Checks all around. River falls a 7, no flush draws, board looks like an uncoordinated mess, no one's been aggressive, I figure my tens are good and bet out 10 large.

Guy goes all-in.

Which is SCREAMING "go away" to me.

I call, putting myself all-in.

Guy flips 8/6 off, having filled his inside straight.

Okey-dokey. I've been a donkey before, I'll be one many times more in days and nights to come. Have to trust your reads, and I misread.

Another 40K re-buy for me, Mr. Cashier.

Later, after serious card deadness for about 40 minutes, I get 2/4 suited. For grins and giggles I join a bunch of limpers into the hand from late position. The rainbow flop totally misses my suit, but the 643 gives me middle pair and an inside straight draw. Couple of limps, then The Guy bets something like half the pot.

Crap crap crap.

I can feel my inner donkey yearning to be free, so I call, other limpers let their donkeys cavort as well. Call, Call. Turn is a deuce, giving me two pair and aforementioned inside straight draw. Check, check.

The Guy bets pot again.

Did I mention "crap" before?

Calling will cost me something like 20K at this point. I have something like 30K. My inner donkey is channeling old Nike commercials, hissing "Just Do It!" in my inner ear. "Two pair is a good hand, you can hit the straight, and you might catch a boat. What are you waiting for, Mut-boy?"

The Guy has at least a set. My gut tells me he flopped the straight and is defending it from something stupid, or hoping one or more of the ghost donkeys he can no doubt sense thundering around the table does indeed assert control.

But I love my inner donkey. I go all in.

The two players before the guy whip their inner donkeys into submission and both fold. The Guy insta-calls.

Turn is bubkus. The Guy shows his straight. I show my donkalicious cards.

I say to the table "I have now donked off nearly all my winnings for tonight, so bedtime for the Mut," or something like that.

The Guy says, "Mut, don't go." Gee, thanks. As they say, everyone's got one.

I type (churlishly, I admit) "I know I'm you're good luck charm, but I really have to go."

He responds "Wait, did you get it?" as I'm closing the window.

The Guy, it turns out, had gifted me with a 10,000 PSD transfer. This High Stakes Poker Matasow moment brought to you by Q_Ballss.

Q_Ballss (a.k.a. The Guy -- tick me off, get your real ID mentioned on my blog) is now on the Mut's Official Shit List. OTOH, if he wants those ten large back, he's going to have to win them.

Last Night

I followed the same play pattern as has become my habit; got home around 6:45, walked the RealPhantomMut, and played poker until PhantomWife got home around 8:00. (Okay, she got home around 8:00, I played on until a little after 9:00, when she pulled the plug. Did I mention "Guilt" somewhere in this post?) Anyway, that session was very profitable; when I logged off I was up to 2.85M PSD, up 200K PSD from the previous day. I was playing very solid poker and getting lucky too.

Spent some time with my darling watching TV, talking, trying to pamper her, until she went to sleep, at which point I padded out of the room.

So, cracked-out poker addict that I am, back to PokerStars I go. Found the Evil Den Mother and the Degenerate Cub Scouts again. Played some very high-variance poker, losing big twice to Les Deux Orangs who was on a major rush. He was hitting everything, and I think getting on EDM's nerves a bit. (She was also at different times playing in different cash tourneys. While we played she finished 11th in a ten cent tourney, beating out more than five thousand other players if I recall correctly.)

At one point I was pretty sure I had LDO beat with pocket nines on a trash board, but he bet large and I folded, telling him I thought he'd catch his Ace on the turn or river. (He'd already felted me twice. Did I mention I was playing a loose, high variance style?) He said he had sevens, but I still feel good about the fold, because the way the cards were falling he would have probably caught 7-7 runners to make quads.

When he left, Les Deux Orangs had something like 475,000 on the table. Not shabby.

Long story short, I played until I was literally falling asleep at the keyboard, down 100,000 from where I was previously in the evening.

Conclusion: Late night sessions are fun, but I really should tighten up. And even on a Friday night, even my inner donkey is kicking me in the head, saying "Get more sleep, you idiot!"

I love my inner donkey, but he can be a bastard at times.

But Wait! There's More!....

Quads

Maybe the bad running is over for now. PhantomWife slipped into slumber and I slipped off to the kitchen to play a couple of hours of poker. Finished up 150K PSD on the evening.

Why I think the bad running may be over is that I actually hit a couple of up-and-down straight draws, had a top-pair/top-kicker with a nut flush draw actually turn into the flush, etc. In other words, things broke my way on multiple occasions.

But of course, I lost twice with boats to quads.

Anyone who has read my posts to this point will start to realize I've been a fracking quad magnet.

Once happened at an early table and did end up felting me. (Flopped the boat with low connectors, bet it hard, got raised, went all-in, c'est la vie.) Second happened at a table with the Evil Denmother and her Degenerate Cub Scouts. That one I got away from with a minimal loss (about 10% of my stack, as I recall) because the board was 88Q and I was holding AQ. I bet ~4K or thereabouts, got (I think) two callers. Turn is an 8. Checks all around. River is a Ten, IIRC. I bet another eight thou, one guy folds, other guy raises to sixteen thou, I call fully expecting to see the fourth 8 flip over. And it does.

The weird thing is, I've gotten totally zen with the quad sightings. One of those "snakes on a plan, whatchoo gonna do" kind of things.

When I typed "I don't know how many times I've lost to quads" Evil Denmother types back something like "I've lost count".

Evil Denmother is cool. (I think she's seen it happen to me four times, but it may be more by now.)

I call her Evil Denmother here because she's:

1. Very pleasant to chat with,
2. Extremely comfortable taking your chips, and
3. Almost always accompanied by members of a group I think of as the Degenerate Cub Scouts.

The DCS generally know how to play, have pretty deep PSD stacks, and aren't uncivilized louts.

Funny how virtual communities can coalesce around someone like Evil Denmother.

So, at that table I was up to a stack of 300K PSD at one point, before having a couple of legit hands turn sour as well as losing concentration and flat-out donking off about 50K. However, one of the last hands I played had my AT turn into Aces full of Tens.

And my opponent mucked! No quads!

So knocking on wood, with luck my luck (for a while at least) will stay right in the middle of the bell curve.

Bankroll status: 2.65M PSD.

But Wait! There's More!....

Interlude

Played some Friday night. Fell off the wagon (not going to go into that here, but I felt I deserved it after a Full Day of Medical Tests - guys, if you know you're going to be getting EKG(s), do yourself a favor and shave your chest beforehand) but it didn't help my poker game. Finished 3 hours of play up about 10K PSD. Beats losing, but in a way unsatisfying.

Back on the wagon since, but I haven't played poker. Time to re-set the head a bit. Spend more time with the PhantomWife, the RealPhantomMut, PhantomCats[1-4], playing too much Diablo II, etc.

After all, I don't want to get totally cracked out over poker....

But Wait! There's More!....

Talk

Good night last night. Finished up about 100K. Maybe I'm getting my feet back under me.

One incident came up that bugged me though:

With a stack of about 70K, I hit pocket Aces (in the small blind), bet out 4K, got a call from an until-now quiet short stack three positions to my left (~6K, again not really sure), see an nonthreatening flop, push the guy all in, and take down the pot with the guy mucking his losing hand.

Pretty standard felting.

Next hand (on the button) I get the rockets again , bet out 4K, get a single call from the Cocky Bastard (but I mean that in an affectionate way, if he's reading this -- cocky is good if you can back it up) to felted guy's immediate left, and see a Queen-high shotgun flop, but with two diamond on the board. Natch, neither of my aces is a diamond. I bet out 20K into a ~8K pot, which is about half his stack. If he's got a draw I'm going to make him sweat the call.

CB takes his time; I wanted him to think about it, and he is thinking about it.

I type "Unless you have a set, calling is probably a bad idea."

Suddenly, felted guy turns into Tilted Windmill, typing "Call! Call!" and "He's on a flush draw. Call."

Now, I believe I was giving CB honest advice. Maybe I was implying that if I had two pair, but it should have been clear I had an overpair (I think my table image was as being fairly tight, but not in TW's mind, obviously) and I don't think CB would have called my initial 4K with any hand that would have made two pair on that board. Hence, a set or a flush draw.

(Rant: Isn't it rude as all hell to interject yourself into a hand in which you aren't playing? I know it's against the rules in tournament poker, and while cash games are supposed to be more relaxed, butting in is disrespectful of all parties actually playing. Not only that, the guy's advice was dead nuts wrong.)

So anyway, I tell TW that he's being annoying (don't remember the exact words) and politely ask him to cease and desist (maybe not so politely) and he keeps ranting about a flush draw. I say "okay, that's exactly what I have" and CB promptly folds, realizing of course that that isn't what I have. I show the rockets.

"Your reading skills are astounding, TW" I type.

General tilt ensues. Next hand Tilting Windmill goes all-in with his 40K re-buy, CB goes all-in, and I tune out (click on the "fold to any bet" checkbox, "sit out next hand" checkbox, and get up to get a re-fill on my salted-in-the-shell peanuts) while the table goes crazy. When I get back, the guy to CG's left is now sitting on a stack of about 200K and apparently quite a few people have had to re-buy, including TW and CB.

For the rest of the time I was at the table, TW was on an "All in or fold" binge and made it work for him. TW was gunning for me, but I never had a pre-flop hand worth an all-in, and he was avoiding multi-player action. So next time, TW.

(CB calmed down and later left the table with around 100K. When I went to bed TW had about 100K as well, but I doubt he kept it long.)

One other fun hand happened near the end of the evening. Can't remember full details of who started the betting (probably it was me holding AQ, in the small blind again if I recall correctly) but five players were in for 2.4K each pre-flop. Flop comes 77Q. It checks around, and another 7 hits on the turn. (77Q7). Woo hoo! I have a boat. 4K bet. Called all around. River is (again, IIRC) a Ten. Checks around to me, and I check. My hand is displayed, one muck, two mucks, three mucks...

Player to my right turns over his quad Sevens.

"How could you not bet that!"

"Les Deux Oranges" (referring to the Gus Hanson -- but hairier, and schizophrenic -- clone to my immediate left) "taught me the other night about slow-played quads. I've been down that road before."

So again, a minimal loss instead of a catastrophe. (Such are the joys of moral victories.) A couple of hands later I called it a night.

Note: I'm not using any real screen names other than my own in these posts. (Doesn't seem fair to put out scouting reports on players other than myself.) In a future post I'll profile a group of players whom I've stumbled upon and started playing with on a fairly regular basis. Think Evil Den Mother (probably not really evil, but this is a poker blog) and her Degenerate Cub Scouts.

Bankroll status: 2.5M PSD.

But Wait! There's More!....

Dry

So, the "running bad" is still running, but may be easing up a bit.

(This blog should be subtitled "PhantomMut's Chronicle of Bad Beats". At least as of post number 2.)

So here's a partial list:

1. Big slick under the gun bet hard pre-flop (4K, 20X big blind, which wasn't ridiculous for that table) gets three caller. Flop is KKT (if I recall correctly) with two diamonds. I check, guy to my left folds (wtf?), gargantuan stack checks, small stack (less than half mine) checks. An otherwise blank diamond hits on the turn. "Danger Will Robinson!" I try to take the pot down there (barn door, anyone?) by firing another 16K into the 16K pot. G-stack and S-stack both call, and I'm bumming. Fourth diamond hits on the river, G-stack bets the pot, S-stack goes all-in, and I fold. G-stack flips over the Ace-high flush (had nothing else going), S-stack thought his Kings and Tens would be good (ha!), and I'm a hang-dog dog. I immediately announce "No more slow-play!"
2. I lose 24K when my Queens full of Jacks (AJ to a board of QQJQx) is taken down by someone slow playing quad Queens. (He was happy with his play, and I was happy with my play. If I'd been on tilt it would have been hard not to go all-in on the river when he made a 4K bet into a 16K pot. I just called and think I lost the minimum I could lose there.)
3. I force the same player all in while I'm holding pocket Jacks and he's holding pocket Fives. He hits a set on the flop, I don't improve, and I double him up.
4. Begging Donkey (BD) at the table sitting between G-stack, recently seated Creative Aggressive (CA), and me. I've got in the small blind and have AQ. G-stack calls the blind, CA raises to 3.6K (his standard bet) and ND calls, which eats half his stack. I call. Flop is Q87, if I recall correctly. I fire out 20K, again figuring to take it down. Fold, fold to BD, who says, "I have KJ" and I say "call it" AND HE DOES. Turn is a King. River is a blank. I've just doubled the donkey.

The observant reader will realize that I've just described churning a lot of PSD. But the critical thing is that I didn't re-buy once at that table. I lost a lot, but I played aggressively, took down quite a few decent pots without a showdown, played good percentage poker out of position, pushed when I was sure I had the best hand, and folded when I was sure I didn't and pretty sure I couldn't just buy it. I pushed the small stacks around and got out fast against the big stacks (and there were two monsters at the table, both well over 200K by the time I left) when necessary.

In other words, I was happy with how I played; I dealt with some adversity, didn't tilt, and ended the session up 20K from my initial 40K buy-in.

Trouble is, that wasn't the first table I played at.

First table I got busted out fast by some total donkeys doing the all-in tango.

And I realized that part of my problems recently have been because I've given up drinking.

Pleasantly buzzed, I'll be loose enough to take risks, mellow enough to bail on situations that aren't to my advantage. At the first table I was getting irritated and trying to push irrationally. And given the way my luck has been running, that's a recipe for disaster even against (or maybe especially against) banzai idiots.

Unfortunately, playing pleasantly buzzed is no longer an option because:

1. PhantomWife is working on becoming a PhantomMom (wish us luck) and while she's dry I've promised I'll be dry, and....
2. A recent physical resulted in the doc informing me that my liver is an Unhappy Organ.

Surprisingly, as much as I enjoy drinking, giving it up hasn't been a problem so far. Except....

I don't know how to play poker sober!

Actually, that's not true. But what is true is that the emotional posture to play poker well isn't trained into my sober mind. So in a way, I am relearning skills honed while previously stoned.

Bankroll status: 2.4M PSD.

But Wait! There's More!....

Running Bad

First post, and it's a bitch.

Okay, I suppose as poker blogs go, this is extrememly lame, because I'm not even playing for real money. My idea is to hone my skills in freeroll games, get the point where I can do the math fast and accurately on a given hand, and once those basics seem natural, move into live cash games and maybe the nickel and dime online games.

But man, after gaining a certain level of confidence, the past two weeks have seen me doing some very bad running.

Good news: I topped 3 Million PokerStars Dollars (PSD) twice in the past month.
Bad news: Last night I dropped under 2.5 PSD.

Why?

Well. Recently I've gotten fairly proficient at putting people on hands. I play a table for a while, start out loose/passive pre-flop, lose some money with feeler bets, watch how things play out, and within a few blinds I've consistently been able to tell who has what by how much they bet, how fast they bet, and where they bet.

Nailing someone's hand perfectly is almost as sweet a rush as busting a deserving donk out of a game.

Cool, right?

Well, it's cool until you have a week where you yourself bust out consistently by losing your nut straights to flushes on the river, boats to frickin' quads on the river, flushes to boats on the river....

Seeing a pattern here?

What I've been doing is playing aggresively, forcing players all-in while they have inferior hands, and having them hit their 1,2,3,5, or 7 outers on the river on an alarmingly consistent basis.

In too many cases my best poker has lead to my worst results.

It's gotten to the point where I cringe if I'm sure I have someone dominated on the turn, because if there is a way for an opponent's hand to beat me, that way will hit on the river.

For me, the benefit to this episode is that a big hole in my game has been made obvious; running bad has a bad tendency to morph into playing bad. Running bad isn't a sin. Playing bad is. And I can see where I've done that on multiple occasions. I get frustrated and I go beyond aggressive into stupid. I stop trusting my reads. I start taking unneeded risks. I take it personnally when people notice that I'm running bad and start attacking my game. In other words, big-time tilt.

I fully expect the real world will be different than playdollar world. In playdollar world, pricing certain donkeys out of a hand can be nigh unto impossible. Especially the subspecies that haunts the tables immediately after normal business hours. Even at the high stakes tables, these people play like Gus Hansen (after the lobotomy) in the middle of a 36-hour crack binge. I don't expect those types of players to be as prevalent when real money is at stake because, well, it's real frickin' money.

But they will be out there in the real world (and at the real money online tables) nonetheless. They will call my obvious flushes with top pair on the flop and hit runner-runner to catch a boat. And statistically speaking, that will at some point happen consistently over some period long enough to count as a "running bad" episode. If I ever play for real money for any period of time, the "running bad" scenario is inevitable.

Hopefully what's happening now will prepare me for when it happens then. And even if I never play for real money, I've learned something about myself that otherwise wouldn't have been obvious (at least to me). And maybe by working through how to handle the situation at the poker table, I'll figure out how to recognize real-life analogous situations, and apply the same methodologies there.

Who says poker can't be good for you?

But Wait! There's More!....