I'm Not Quite Dead Yet.

Man, its been a while. I know I don't have interesting stories, but I still love posting to this blog, so its sucked not being able to.

I haven't played a whole lot in the past 6 days. Twice, actually.

Friday evening I was partaking in a few adult beverages with some co-workers, when one of them planted the poker bug in my ear. A phone call home later, we were on our way to Prairie Meadows. The wifey was home with a friend baking for tailgating and watching Sex and the City with a friend, so the timing couldn't have been better.

Joe is used to playing 1/2 NL, but was kind enough to play 3/6 with me for the sake of playing together. I'm eager to give 1/2 NL another try, but I think my cash game is still a little too volatile to be profitable in a NL arena. So 3/6 it was, and we sat next to each other in the 1 and 2 seats, for an added good time.

I had an interesting hand early. Well, the hand itself wasn't interesting. It was atrocious, in fact. But the end result was interesting. Picking up pocket Js in early position, I decided to raise them. I HATE to get in trouble with this hand, but wondered if this is the way to play them in limit. Someone let me know. Anyway, I decided to stay the course through the hand despite an xAK flop and a Q turn, but by the river had made broadway. At this point, ashamed of the way I played my Js, I flipped one on top of the other (hoping to represent AJ or anything less pathetic than JJ), and pushed my cards to the middle. The other guy in the pot tossed in his K 10. One of the corners of his card caught, and he had one face up, one face down in the muck. The dealer proceeds to roll his eyes and call over the floor. "I've never seen this before. Both players put their cards in and have one face up and one face down." I'm obviously showing a winner, but apparently you have to show both cards in a showdown. The floor says to split up the pot (which I think is ridiculous because despite the rule, my 1 card is the obvious winner), and in the end, my opponent graciously pushes all the chips my way (which raises another moral question...would *I* have been able to do the same thing?). Is it just me, or is this rule ridiculous? Is that pretty standard practice at cardrooms, or am I just an idiot? I swear all you have to show is a winning card to get the chips. I found out that this is even the rule in the tournaments they run out there. Anyway, I really dodged a bullet, because had his cards landed face up, the sizeable pot would have gone his way.

Things went pretty average for me as the night went on, taking donkeys money on hands in which they should never have seen a river card. Then I got a little too big for my britches and things took a turn for the worse. I raised in EP with KQo, and when the flop missed me, decided I was going all the way. I bet out every street with not one, but two callers, and folded to a raise of my bet on the river. Why I apparently suck at bluffing can be a whole other post sometime. But at this point, previously thinking about getting out of there, I was down $30 and wondering how long I'd have to grind things out to get it back. Well, luckily I didn't have to wait long, as I took a bunch of money from arguably the worst player at the table a few hands later. My AJd hit a diamond draw on the flop, TPTK on the turn, and I kept the 2nd nut flush draw around until the river. If only the flush had hit! Then, a few hands after that I was firing w/QQ, the board came all low, and I got everyone out after the river bet.

So, after a couple hours I walked out of there up $28. It was a little bit of a roller coaster, but man I've gotta get out there more, because the play was just BAD.

Playing at the casino always takes a little bit more out of me/quenches my poker thirst better, so a combination of that and being crazy busy the first part of this week kept me away from the blog and the tables until last night.

I played the $500 guaranteed at 4, and a handfull of SNGs. Variance decided to make an appearance, so things got pretty twisted, and in the end I lost under $4. I actually was ahead like .80 and walked away patting myself on the back for thwarting the variance, but then found out my wife wouldn't be home for another hour, so played a couple more non-cashing $2.20s. I bubbled one on a suckout, and in the other I lost as a huge favorite to the same guy with the same A3h TWICE. Sick. Those two tourneys pretty much epitomized the variance I saw last night. I did a lot of losing as a favorite and winning as a dog, but when I tend to get in as a favorite, that does not bode well for the results. The good news is that I had accidentally gotten into a $2.20 Turbo SNG, so I played mostly $2.20s because my OCD kicked in and I wanted to get my bankroll back to .50 and .00. So I can thank my Rainman tendencies for minimizing my losses last night, when I was getting whipped w/the variance stick.

Our monthly game is tomorrow, so I'm really looking forward to that. It's been treating me pretty well for the past 2-3 months, so I wouldn't be surprised if the poker didn't go well. But rarely do I lose when it comes to the drinking.

I have noticed a lot of you bloggers are losing quite a bit lately. I just wanna send out some good karma. That's plenty of this losing crap. Things need to right themselves.

Ok, on to the next thing. I've gotta get through the rest of the past couple of days of blogs, and catch up on some emailing. Thanks for stopping by.