Image

A lot of stuff happening in the mut's life of late. My mind's not been focused on my poker, and it's shown in my play (and, of course, in my bankroll).

So last Saturday the 28th the PhantomWife has gone to bed, and I've gone to the kitchen to play poker. First table I'm at I play like a total goofball, losing 100,000 PSD in relatively short order, but not worrying much about it because I'm goofing off. (Today's word is "goof".)

I decide to get serious, switch to .01/.02 USD, and discover my head isn't in it enough to play that, losing a real dollar in a really short time.

Being a goof but not yet an idiot, I decide to focus on the social aspects of poker and flee from the real money tables, looking for someone I enjoy playing with. I find the Evil Denmother and elements of the Degenerate Cubscout troop. Play some hands, get my head back into pokerspace, and start pulling away. Actiongomez shows up, but I'm in a decent state and actually refrain (or at least moderate) my taunting. After a couple of hours I'm sitting pretty on something like 285K PSD, and combined with some winning from Thursday night, I'm actually over the 4 Million mark.

Then comes the suckout.

It was late, and I don't even remember the guy's handle, but a player who showed up and immediately Dutched his way to 200K goes all in from early position, and I'm holding pocket aces.

His Q8 (but they were suited!) turns into a straight to the ten (yes, four cards to the straight busted my rockets) and suddenly I'm down to about 85K in front of me.

And yes, tilt ensues.

Made worse when Dutch donks off all the chips that used to be mine to gomez.

Ah well. Long story short, I ended the evening way too late in the night, down to 3.44M PSD. And yes, that's by far the biggest swing I've seen in one session.

I promised Les Deux Orangs last night that I would post about embarrasing mut-poker today; that's my embarrasing mut-poker.

Last night was a lot better, although I still made one hugely stupid play.

First, a bit of revenge, and how image came to be the title of this post.

Found the Degenerate Cubscouts again (Les Deux, Death-to-Poochie who had a huge stack, NoStaticAtAll, and the Evil Denmother), and after getting felted by Evil Denmother twice (on hands I should have been able to get away from -- once trip jacks, queen kicker beaten by trip jacks, king kicker, the other IIRC trips taken down by a boat) I had settled down and was slowly gaining chips. (The hands against Evil Denmother were stupid, considering how often she's felted me in the past, but defensible I think.)

I was also doing something I don't generally like doing, which was playing two tables at once.

Last night I decided to sit in on one of the Turbo Dime tourneys, and actually caught some cards early and was doing well. During a tourney hand that required concentration, a new player had taken a seat at the cash table and pushed from early position into a TTK flop where I happened to catch trip tens.

I do what I nearly always do in that situation; I go all-in. I get an immediate call; either the turn or the river (can't recall which) gives me a boat, and I felt the new guy his first hand at the table.

The new guy, it turns out, is gomez, who'd caught Big Slick on his first hand.

Talk about a "Wrath of Khan" moment.

(Won the tourney hand too, but that's all I remember about it.)

A little later my hugely stupid hand (see, I got back to it) was calling gomez' all-in with an ace on the board while holding second pair (Jacks) with a King kicker. Donked off most of half my stack to some random player's AQ. (Gomez caught a small piece of that pot; he had a bigger stack than random player going in, but his kicker was weaker. As I recall Gomez ended that hand at about 17K.)

Yes, it was stupid; I was trying to nurse a small stack in the tourney, and I was, I admit, back in a bit of goof-mode imagining the tilt that would ensue if my Jacks tripped, or if I caught a King for two pair, because gomez' all-in was screaming weak ace.

Finished the tourney not long after in 133rd place, earning a whopping $.32 for a .22 cent profit.

Woo hoo!

But about image.

My play on the felting boat hand was purely reflexive. (Which is why I don't like playing multiple tables; that kind of thing should never be reflexive.) But whenever the odds say I probably have the best hand, and I find an unrecognized player pushing into me, I push back and push back hard. (BTW, the same instinct really screws me over in tourneys, but that's for another post....)

I often win these hands, either by having the agressor muck or by showing down with the better hand.

Even if I don't win those hands, I hopefully establish that bluffing and loose play both carry risks. (Against guys like the earlier mentioned Dutch that can be a vain hope, but hey...)

In Doyle Brunson's Super System, he talks about forcing your opponent to think about the bet after the bet. To place into that person's mind the idea that a bet (or a raise) may not be just for the chips going out now, but possibly for all the chips in his or her stack.

I'm not going to go into all my thinking about image (gotta keep some secrets) but I don't think I'm letting too much out of the bag in saying that I always want to project an image of strength at the table. Which means calling B.S. when I think I see it.

(The risk, of course, is pushing beyond "strong" into "stupid", but again, that's another post.)

Postscript: Unfortunately, I think I've pissed off Evil Denmother, who apparently counts gomez as a friend. Part of image, at least as important as strength in all likelihood, is demeanor.

My demeanor towards gomez at the tables has frankly been awful. (See the running trash-talking in the last post for an example.

If I do progress as a poker player, I will inevitably run into people who emulate the worst of the poker loudmouths, and I'll have to have a strategy for dealing with them. While it might be fun talking back and possibly tilting these people, the bottom line is there are others at the table who may or may not be enjoying the show. And at any given table, if I plan to stick around, I want these other people happy to be playing with me, and I really don't want a quality player (such as, say, Evil Denmother) gunning for me because of my 'tude.

That's just not smart poker, and therefore it's really stupid to let that kind of trash become part of my image.

Bankroll status: 3.54M PSD, 46.11 USD (After many hours of "donkalicious entertainment", down less than a healthy PSD raise and one USD. Hard to get better value for your insomnia-killing play- and/or real dollar, huh, Senator Frist? Hope you enjoy your well-earned minority status.)