Chasing Chris Ferguson

This doesn’t have anything to do with the band…but rather my mood of late. Maybe it has something to do with the full moon, yes I am one of those people that it affects. Don’t ask me how or why, I have no idea, but when I play poker during a full moon it is NEVER good!

And no, I don’t look at the moon before I play, but I should. I can tell the moon is full because I get great hands cracked, over and over.  And the worst part is… the mood to play, the urge, is very strong during a full moon, or when it is almost full.  So it was last week, when I went on a binge of playing, mostly in the 2/4 Stud H/L and even a brief foray into the 3/6.

They were of course games full of action and big pots, not that it did me any good. I played exactly 2 hands in the 3/6 which were 6-6-6-2-2, which lost to A-9-7-J-9-A-A. And the other was A-A-A-2-3-5-9 which lost to 7-6-3-K-J-5-4. Of course these 2 beats had my chip stack bleeding so I quit. That was the only smart thing I did!

It didn’t matter that I started with the best time after time, and made an ok hand like AA with a 7-5 for low, I didn’t improve and was creamed on the end, always.  Maybe it is true, it doesn’t matter what you start with, only what you end up with.  I found the quality of play slightly better at these limits, but there was a Mr. Horseshoe guy in the 2/4 who raised every hand, and bet it all the way no matter what. A real chip burner, but he was burning mine and they were all going to someone else.  The best course to take in these games, if things are sour, is to leave, no matter how good the game is, and I know it, I just didn’t do it.  So my Bankroll took a severe hit. The only thing that makes me feel better is when I looked at Chris Ferguson’s chart on Full Tilt Poker and saw that in a very short time last year he lost 1/3 of his Bankroll…from almost $30k down to less than $10k.  So, looking at that I don’t feel quite so bad, although he still had thousands left and I have a couple of hundred.

After the smacking I took I had to take a break and try to get my head screwed on straight. Or try anyway. Last night I played in two freerolls on PokerStars, just to play around (it was that or spider solitaire!) and to see if my cards had changed at all. A free testing of the waters. The Omaha H/L was totally nuts with every card capped till the river. Real skill there, a crap shoot with cards and chips. I did ok shooting the dice and out of about 5,000 came in 159 which was 60 away from a ticket to the Weekly Round 2.  I made it that far by jumping in with anything I felt like playing, and if I got a flop, I stayed in. I always lost if I had something good like AA-23 double suited, go figure.  I multi-tabled and also played in the Hubble’s Freeroll NL HE and lasted almost 2 hours.  My mood was at least right to play and it didn’t even bother me when my K-Q[S] got snapped by 6-6 and I was out.

Freerolls are the hardest game to beat in the universe. Nobody has anything invested and if they lose, they just get in another one. They are all playing hoping to get lucky, so skill or solid play never enters the picture. Poor Maxiecat is having a bad time with this. Maybe she too should let it rip a few times, and just play whatever 2 cards strikes her fancy, see how that works. It is not a good habit to get into if she gets in a cash game, but does it really matter in a Freeroll? I just don’t know, and I have no clue how I ever won any of them and got to where I am now, actually having a Bankroll.

Maybe the hard part isn’t so much building a little Bankroll from nothing, but keeping it once you have it. I know Linda has struggled with this as well. It could be that we are trying to pump it up too fast, in my case by getting in bigger games to soon. Ken can give me the stats, with a bankroll of $300 what limits can I play? I think I remember reading something about 100x the big blind is what your bankroll should be? Am I way off?  I never paid much attention to any of that stuff, I don’t analyze a hand, the odds, etc. I just play. There are times I do look at the pot and make the call based on the pot odds, but it is not something I think about hand after hand.  Being too technical ruins the joy of the game for me.

I am still not ready to play any cash games, am still on sabatical, but will keep plugging in the Stud8 tourneys. I would like to play in the $3 buy-in but that would require me being up at 5-6 a.m. or some ungodly hour, so that will not happen. PokerStars only has two Stud8 tourneys a day, one at 5:30 p.m. (dinnertime) and the other when the birds get up.  Maybe they have some bigger buy-in ones at more convienient times for me, I will have to check them out. I can move up in buy-ins I suppose, I am just in my conservative mode.

Meanwhile Back at the Ranch…

Life has calmed down a little, we have a 2 week break between Reno trips. Hubby goes back on March 5th for a CT scan, which will tell us if the chemo is/has worked. Needless to say that is #1 on our prayer list right now, that we hear good news. 

I am getting used to my new PC, and don’t hate the Vista like I thought I would, but it is Vista Ultimate, if that makes a difference.  Of course things are “there” just in places I can’t find them! And I can’t get rid of my old PC because so far it is the only way I can edit my website (for my online business). I haven’t had time to tackle it all.  I am also trying to transfer my domain names and set my biz up on a new host/server…whatever.  This has been a nightmare to equal Linda’s mortgage company fiasco.  Since my main domain name is associated with a defunct email address, I have had to jump through flaming hoops with “DomainPeople” to prove I own the damn thing.  I have sent them all they asked for 3 times. I finally emailed them “What is the problem? I have done everything you asked THREE times! I am highly irritated at the way this is NOT being handled. What else do you want? I would send you my first born…but I don’t have one!”  I haven’t heard from them for four days now.  So, of course I emailed them again. I will bite the bullett and call them, in Canada, tomorrow.  The good thing is the name is paid for until next year, so at least I won’t lose it while this mess is going on. Thank you Linda, for all your help, if not for your wealth of knowledge and “geekiness” I could never attempt this!

Maybe it is an age thing, but nothing is simple anymore. Try to do something that should take 5 minutes, and it takes 5 days. And forget customer service, it should be renamed “customer dis-service” because that is truly what it is. Just when I give up hope of ever talking to anyone who actually has a brain, I find a jewel.

In this case it is at AllState Insurance. With the almost 7 feet of snow we had, our greenhouse hit the dirt, or rather snow.  Tons of snow fell from the trees and crushed it. I filed a claim, that is what I pay homeowners insurance for I guess, and the gal was so nice! She knows her job and is helpful in all ways. A breath of fresh air in a world of dis-service. After only 2 days she says the check is in the mail.  This is the second claim I have had to file, the first was when hubby rolled our SUV down the hill, and I was totally impressed with how it was handled. The adjuster even met us on a Sunday, her day off to give me the check, so we could go buy the new truck. Amazing! See, they are out there, the people who actually do their jobs and care by going that extra mile…they are just darn hard to find… except at AllState.

Until next time…grab a chair, see you there…on PokerStars!

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 24th, 2008 at 2:20 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.