Quest of a Closet Poker Player

After a 9:00AM call this morning, I headed up to bed having pulled another all-nighter of work. I’m in a difficult, uncomfortable world right now where my bed is an unwelcome sight and insomnia is my mistress.

It’s not very pretty, and I don’t feel very comfortable most of the time right now. It was actually great to collapse in my own bed today, and Sweetie was planning to let me sleep until 5:00 (woke up at 2:00). I had some Total before my call but nothing since, which isn’t so bad either.

As you know, we lost Rob last week and are down to Neil and Kat. Our greatest achievement was stemming the tide of losses, as our duo lost $19.10 with Neil showing a slight uptick and Kat dropping a couple of $5 SNG buy-in’s.

Neil aka “kgblovesoreos” has an initial investment of $500 on PokerStars, and his bankroll now sits at $237.15. We’re refocused on SNG’s for now, which is always a good strategy to stem the tides if you’re in the midst of a bad run.

Kat has an initial investment of $200 on PokerStars and she has $111.10 in her account. We switched solely to 9 person SNG’s at the $5+0.50 level last week. Here’s what Kat had to say about the week:
“I’m finding the play at the 5+50 sng’s on stars a lot like bingo this week. I’ve played a few with Juliette sweating me, and even she can’t believe the moves people are getting away with. People are playing all kinds of crap and
getting paid off, like in one sng that I BUBBLED on (god i hate the bubble):

I had AJ off in late position, the table shortstack but not at a bad M, and raise 3x bb when it was folded around to me. Button folds, SB calls, BB folds. Flop is QKT rainbow, I go allin to grab (been having bad luck when
opponents see the turn/river) and SB smooth calls. Cards flip over, he has Q7off. Yes, he’s called an allin bet worth 2/3 his stack on middle pair, no kicker. So even as I’m getting excited about my double up, my laptop
connection lags for a moment, and then it catches up I see a rapid fire turn and river, both Queens. My str8 loses to quads.

“Now that is the worst scenario that’s happened this weekend, but it’s certainly not the only instance of me losing the best hand when someone else chases and catches. And I’m playing good poker…tight aggressive all the way. But I feel like I’m playing poker against Bingo players. I’m going to play another sng or two tonight, but I’m going to play a $10+1
to see if the standard of play improves. If not, then I’m going to bid a not-so-fond farewell to stars sng’s and concentrate more on cash tight aggressive on cash games. What’s funny about this is I’ve been playing the same buyin/player sng’s on Full tilt with much better success. I think Poker Stars alogrithm hates me this week *grin.”

Guin had some interesting thoughts on coaching in an email last week. “As a coach, I would expect them to possibly send you a session at a SNG and/or a cash game for you to review. Try to get them to focus on something like playing better position with some junk like A-10o from EP, which they should chuck away. More work for you sure, but it gives you a better chance to see where they started and where they ended up. Just telling you that they lost cash could miss the importance of how unlucky they were over a small sample size.”

I snuck a peak last night at the MATH as Fuel55 dominated. I played in my first real tournament in a long, long time, finishing 55th out of 360 in a $30 buy-in Stars event. I open pushed early with 55, running into the button’s AKo. I was down to an M of 3 and could have mucked it for sure, but I wanted to see if I could chip up some. I’d thrown middle and small pairs away much of the night as I spent most of the time at or below average in chips. It was a nice change of pace, and I’m feeling a little calling to start the quest that others are on as well.

And with 2007 comes a new banner for CC’s Thursday Bash. Nothing like G-Vegas genes to create cultured young men… Thanks for stopping by.

ADDENDUM 4:34AM

While searching for items to develop a direct mail program for my company, I stumbled upon Beauty and the Beer.  In this post, she talks about going to the Sex Party with forty other ladies to buy sex toys, as well as her escapade with the silver Bullet vibrator which gets sucked into her butt.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007 at 3:42 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.