Poker Perambulation

No, not really. I just thought I'd make fun of the latest in-term that crept into the language. Seems to have gotten old hat in the course of a single WSOP. Well, I should make at least one of the silly term true. So, here you go: Lightning36

Why him? Well, he posted a very nice comment in my last blog. It is one of the reasons we do this. I’ll even forgive him the background sounds on his blog – which is so Web 1.0. Besides that, he’s sorta local so he could find me and do damage should I get on his case. And, I can live with the sound effect by avoiding them using the RSS feed most of the time. I’ll suggest that to you folks. Good read. Nice guy.

Enough about others. Me. Me. Me. Isn’t that what poker and its related blogging is all about? I managed another 2^nd.  Again, it was an annoying situation where I thought I was in control and the deck hit him over the head or I did the brain fart thing. (Sounding bitter and redundant; that last sentence.)

I’m actually happy about it all. I did it from a chip and a chair. Make that 128 (2^7 or 1000000B or 80H in geek) chips. It happened after a couple of major suckouts that aren’t that uncommon. What felt uncommon was it was from the guy two seats to my left. That seat has been an ongoing source of irritation. Other rile at the shuffle; I’m wearing my tinfoil hat so UB can’t find me so easily and put a loose cannon luckbox repeatedly in that seat.

I watched this guy play a lot of hand against a lot of folks. The showdowns were amazing with him rivering time and again with a wide assortment of typically very limited outs. He never just entered the pot but completed and reraised 95% of the time and was happy to cap with any three cards.

When the blinds were getting there, I made a stand on two hands against him. They weren’t great/nut hands but they were both ahead to the river where he did his thing. Damn cheesehead too. How they ever win anything is using the infinite monkeys solution. That even got one of them 12 bracelets. Their state beasty is the Badger – a surly little numbskull. Seems fitting. There only claim to fame is their per capita consumption of brandy is twice to much, much greater than any other area.  And, I mean that sweet, domestic crap that used to be the norm.

Anyway, lets get back to the important stuff, me. After a couple of double/triple/quadruple ups, I had some breathing room and managed to go on a tear. I approached the final table – small tournament with only 5 paying – trading the chip lead back and forth.

I played the final table as well as I can. It mixed table captaining with trying to instigate confrontation between others. All this is happening three breaks into play and that means the blinds and antes are turning things into looking like the start of a NL freeroll. Most had to enter a hand assuming they were pot committing beyond just the limp entry. At stud limping is from 1/3^rd to ½ the small bet. (My nemesis had left well before the money. Dancing on graves is such a lovely danse macabre. Doesn’t improve afterlife points but revenge is sweet.) Two of us were capable of playing without self-destructing quickly – although, he did. He was willing to chase draws. You have to do some of that at stud but when it gets to these levels you have to make a major gear change. He didn’t.

OK, lets end my good news/play and get to the horrid fact. I entered heads up with 2:1 on my side. I put him on the ropes and then let him crawl back and then take the lead. Yeah, the deck hit him over the head and the hands that looked to me like probable winners ended up not so grand. When his heater hit, I should have also done a better gear shift than I did – my bad.

Addendum:

I then went to the Stud8 ring game and proceeded to dump my profits in two sessions. Part is still playing to many situations. The other was some really horrid hands. In the one session where I lost a double buyin, I played 8% of the hands. That’s an unbelievable percentage. It is about half of what you’d see a total rock play.

I’m not sure I care that much for S8 ring. Limit tournaments changes game style so much and I find it fun to play all the personalities that the blinds demand. Limit ring is just grind, grind, grind. That isn’t my best feature.

I did play a bit of my old stud hi favorite. The high only game felt a bit strange. I kept catching myself wanting to play S8 hands. No, I didn’t play them but they ran through my mind in a weird way I wasn’t expecting. I need to play hi more often to get that out of my system.

Interesting bit from NASA. They mapped trees. It even looks at average heights. Here is the map for the U.S. and you can see the mountains and non-arable land outlined in trees.

Map is article link

Related posts:

1. Link Pimping