on the ascent

played a little .25/.50 no limit on ub last night. won close to $70 due in large part to the bad play of a couple of players.

i almost hesitate to post these hands because no doubt it exposes me as the bad player that i am. i guess on one level i'm thinking about my outs, pot odds and implied odds, but for the most part i'm going on my gut is telling me about my opponents.

hand one: slow play gone bad (for him)
Sepulveda (No Limit Hold'em) Powered by UltimateBet
     TankSJ: T T

Pre-flop:
     TankSJ calls. 4s folds.5s folds. 6s folds.7s folds.8s folds. 9s calls. 0s folds. 1s raises to $2.50. 2s calls. TankSJ calls. 9s folds.

Flop (board: K 4 Q ):
     1s checks. 2s checks. TankSJ checks.

Turn (board: K 4 Q J ):
     1s checks. 2s checks. TankSJ bets $5. 1s calls. 2s folds.

River (board: K 4 Q J 9 ):
     1s checks. TankSJ bets $7.50. 1s calls.

Showdown:
     TankSJ shows T T: straight, king high.
     1s mucks cards. ( K A )

if he bets on the flop i have a tough decision before me but he lets me see the turn for free. if the tables were turned i would come out firing with two diamonds on the board.

hand two: wtf?
Sepulveda (No Limit Hold'em) Powered by UltimateBet
     TankSJ: K Q

Pre-flop:
     6s folds. 7s folds. 8s folds. 9s calls. 0s calls. 1s folds. 2s folds. TankSJ raises to $2. 4s folds. 5s folds. 9s calls. 0s folds.

Flop (board: 2 Q 8 ):
     9s bets $5.25. TankSJ raises to $10.50. 9s calls.

Turn (board: 2 Q 8 8 ):
     9s bets $26.25. TankSJ calls.

River (board: 2 Q 8 8 5 ):
     9s goes all-in for $6.60. TankSJ calls.

Showdown:
     9s shows 3 J: a pair of eights.
     TankSJ shows K Q: two pair, queens and eights.

i haven't done the math on what kind of odds i was getting on calling the bet on the turn, but from what i had seen of the 9s's play, i didn't think he was going to have 8's or AQ without raising pre-flop. he could have stayed in with A8s but i just had to take the chance.

after everybody left the table i decided to play a $10, 10-man sit-n-go. i had sworn off the sng'g for a while after a string of beats but flush with my success earlier i decided to face my demons. played pretty tight and managed to get heads up. i played pretty aggressively but finally lost when my AQo didn't improve against a pair of 5s. next stop, a multi-table.

a little no-limit

after NC decided to bail at the last minute, tuesday night poker was cancelled and all of a sudden i had a free evening on my hands. T was having dinner with a girlfriend so i decided to jump on ub. jumped into a pretty juicy nlhe table. one hand of note

(No Limit Hold'em) Powered by UltimateBet
     TankSJ: A J

Pre-flop:
     7s folds. 8s calls. TankSJ calls. 0s raises to $2.75. 1s folds. 2s folds. 3s folds. 4s folds. 5s folds. 6s calls. 8s folds. TankSJ calls.

Flop (board: T 8 6):
     6s checks. TankSJ bets $4.75. 0s raises to $9.50. 6s goes all-in for $8.50. TankSJ calls.

Turn (board: T 8 6 A):
     TankSJ goes all-in for $11.75. 0s calls.

River (board: T 8 6 A 4):

Showdown:
     TankSJ shows A J: flush, ace/jack high.
     0s mucks cards. (T J. )
     6s shows J 9: flush, ace/ten high.

i hadn't been at the table long but i had been there long enough to see the 0s raising with anything so i decided to see the flop. the pot sized bet on the flop was questionable but luckily it worked out for me.

i had queens at least three times and twice a queen high flop came. both times i had to bet something because there were flush/straight possibilities on the board and i couldn't let them see a card for free. unfortunately everyone folded when i bet. better to win a small pot though.

thanks to iggy at guinnessandpoker.blogspot.com for the mention. now i feel more compelled to keep up with the poker-related blogging.

up, and then down

my one knock against ultimate bet is that you can't request a complete hand history at the end of a session. other sites seem to be able to do it. or maybe i just havne't figured it out. so being lazy last night i didn't copy down any of my hands.

now that my bankroll is dangerously low, i'm working at slowly building it back up, which means
a. playing smaller limits
b. playing tighter

that said, i sat down at a .25/.50 no-limit table last night. as is always the case, the only hands i can remember are the ones i lost. i got bluffed out of a pot with 10s by ace-jack off when a king came on the flop. i would have caught a ten on the river and spanked the two jokers (winner had a pair of 9s) but i guess i left my purse in the car. another time my jacks fell to mister ace-eight who called both my pre-flop raise and flop bet to catch an ace on the turn. at one point i was up something like 70 BB but had to be content walking away up just 10.
-----
as i mentioned yesterday, T and i picked up our wedding bands over the weekend. yesterday i decided to take it for a test spin. i would be lying if i said i wasn't conscious of that little shiny band on my finger all day. i kept taking it off and turning it in my fingers. we had a team meeting in the afternoon and i really noticed it when i was clapping. the ring actually hurt a little bit as is hit my finger repeatedly. after a while i was able to reduce the pounding by changing my hand positions when i was clapping. just one of the many adjustments i guess i have to look forward to.

poker, scrabble, rings

friday was the final table for the bay 101 shooting stars $5,200 buy-in no-limit hold'em tournament. MN, NC and RL decided to take the day off and try to go down and watch the taping of the final table. they had invited me but the idea of sitting around watching poker on tv monitors hundreds of feet away from the action just didn't sound appealing. i mean, it's one thing to be playing at a poker table and having to sit through all the folding, but having to watch it just didn't sound so fun.

the bay 101 web site said that there would be 200 seats given out on a first come, first serve basis. what they really should have said was, "we're going to reserve 175 seats for pros, celebrities and relatives and let you plebians wait in line for over three hours letting you think you have the remotest chance of getting in." apparently when they finally opened the doors they only let about 10 people in and said that they were full. the guys went back a little while later and found the line only somewhere in the high teens. some guy at the front of the line said that every time a seat opened up, some celebrity or high-roller was given the seat instead of the people in line. one strike against the wpt.

aorund 4:30 i met up with the guys and we had a special friday edition of tuesday night poker. CB couldn't be there so we played 4 handed. you know you are degerate poker gamblers when you are willing to play 4 handed. since there were only four of us i suggested we play with a single blind instead of the usual two. for the first couple of orbits the big blind would complain if everyone folded to him because all he was pulling back was his own blind and not even the small blind, but after a while as the bets got bigger i don't remember anyone complaining.

i was taking a dubbing for most the night, down over $100 at one point, but as is the case with no-limit, it only took one hand to make up a lot of the lost ground. as usual, NC was taking a lot of the pots pre-flop by raising 7x 8x the big blind. utg, i decide to limp in with 3s. 3 -hand the flop comes K 3 Q and i raise NC's initial $5 bet to $15. a 4 on the turn and i bet out $20. i throw in my last $5 on the river and NC mucks after seeing the 3s. he said he had two pair.

i still ended down $40, but it was a pretty good feeling to have been able to claw my way out of a hole.
------

one thing i share with paul phillips is an affection for scrabble, although no doubt that mr. phillips could decimate me in both poker and scrabble. T and i play, a lot. i'd say on average we play at least 3 or 4 games a week. our games are always competitive- we don't pull any punches.

on saturday i invited my cousin and his wife over for dinner. my cousin is going to officiate our wedding and we wanted a chance to discuss wedding arrangements. T and i had decided that we would make shrimp pasta for the main course. while we were buying the shrimp we started "negotiating" who would do the unpleasant task of de-veining the shrimp. just to make things interesting i suggested we play a game of scrabble, loser does the dirty. of course T agreed readily.

T: 279, our hero:289

i have a feeling we'll be playing for other stakes in the future.
------

sunday we picked up our wedding bands. one more thing off the checklist. i wore the ring around yesterday to get used to it. it's funny how you can be so conscious of such a small piece of metal. now T and i have to decide what we want to engrave on the bands.

145 days.

ruminations

T came over for dinner last night so no poker. we ordered pizza and fixated ourselves to the couch to watch the thursday night line up. i have to say, donald trump is one smart man. i admit that i have been sucked into "the apprentice." it's definitely not the worst reality show out there. but more that that, "the apprentice" is the biggest piece of self-aggrandizing pr out there. not only is mr. trump probably making a little money off the show (he's the executive producer), he gets a new executive and he gets to market himself to the world.

last night the captain from the winning team got to spend 10 minutes alone with mr. trump. the apprentice asked who mr. trump's biggest influence in the world was and donald answered that it was his father. he then proceeded to show the apprentice pictures of his parents. now i'm not accusing him of insincerity, but if donald trump wanted the world to think that he is a great guy who loves his parents, i can't think of a better way to solicit an "ah gee, he's just like us" moment than to do it like that (in front of million of viewers).

the wpt is in town and RL, MN and NC are playing hookie to watch the final table. i just can't think it would be all that interesting to watch the game live; they cut out a whole lot of folding for the tv show and i don't think they'll show you the hole cards so you're just sitting there watching the monitors. phil gordon is starting off with a humongous stack (3 times his closest opponent and almost 8 times the 5 and 6 stacks) so it could be over very quickly. i wonder what the wpt would do if the tournament finished in less than an hour? can we say "filler"? if all goes well we're playing tonight after work so i might actually have a little poker to relate.

temptation resisted

after two nights of taking a beating due largely to my bone-headed play i decided i would take the night off. it wasn't exactly a poker-free night; i watched the wpt season premier and did watch some tables at ub. ok, i did sit down at one table, but it was empty. fricking ub wouldn't tell me how much i had left in my account so i decided to sit down so i could see how much i could buy in for. but that was it, i swear.

last night's wpt was pretty interesting. i think the wpt would be hard pressed to put together a more eclectic final table. as i was watching the end i couldn't help but think of all the people out there who are going to come away from the show and think "i should go all in with pocket 6's." hopefully i'll be able to benefit from this when we hit las vegas at the end of the month. at first i was a little leary of trying my hand at the no-limit table at the bellagio, but the more i think about it, i think i should at least give it a try.

superman... well sort of

took another beating at ub last night. i can say honestly i just played dumb last night. i deserved what i got. the only problem is that i am now precariously in the 20s. given all the bills i am going to be incurring in the next couple of months i don't think i'll be recharging should the unthinkable happen. so i guess i'll just play with my points and should i exhaust those i'll take a sabbatical.

since i really don't want to recall anything about last night i'll just have to point users over to poker grub for a good trip report and also a much better review of "the passion of the christ". i wish i could write half as well as grubby.

this morning i was reminded of a story from my last trip to las vegas. it's funny what triggered the memory: last night i got to watch "scrubs," one of my favorite shows on tv right now (besides the wpt of course) since RL was sick and tuesday night poker got cancelled. because of that i was singing (half singing, half humming really), the opening song this morning and got to the line "i'm no superman." last time at vegas there was a big guy sitting over in the 8s with a silver ring with the superman "s". my neighbor and i started calling him superman, not just because he was big enough to be the man of steel, but also because he was getting super-humanly lucky. after one hand where my neighbor said "i'm not going to play against superman" the guy said "it's actually not what you think." well enlighten us professor.

it turns out the guy was a polo player and had won the ring as being the person who survived (actually he didn't mention whether the ring was ever awarded posthumously) the worst polo-related accident from the previous season. apparently the honor (and ring) is bestowed by the fellow players. in a sense i guess superman is an apt title since surviving a horse trampling is no small feat. but in the end, even the man of steel left down a little bit; he couldn't defeat the arch-villian of bad starting hand selection.

only 3.5 weeks until vegas,

slammed

ugh. just as some days you can't do anything wrong, there are night when you can't do anything right. the night started off promising with three hand of big slick in the first 30 or so hands. then it was all downhill from there. it was the classic case where i wasn't catching anything (or if i did catch something someone caught something better) so i gave into the temptation of playing bad hands, caught part of a flop and then let it drag me all the way to the river. and once you're stuck you just hate walking away.

thank goodness it's tuesday. time for the regular tuesday night game.

on a separate note, i think i've taken my first steps into the poker blog community. linda g. of pokerworks.com has added a link from her site to mine. it's humbling to be included on her list as she has one of my favorite blogs on the web. it also motivates me a little more considering her link might actually bring me some traffic.

get out and vote.

down the path

i just put the deposit down on our honeymoon. honeymoon!!! T and i are going to take a european tour. one of our stops is in paris. tempted as i am to check out the aviation club i think i'll wait until the next time. i don't think gambling on a honeymoons is a good combination.

i'm still excited about finding the first edition caro book. the greedy bastard inside of me says i should sell the book, buy a later edition and pocket the difference.

152 days