Life and Times of a Poker Addict

Two poker posts in a row.

First, a few housekeeping measures. A big thanks goes out to Professional Poker Player™ Chris Halverson who seems to be sending me the most traffic of late. Also, I signed up for the PokerStars Internet Blogger tourney... it came with the correct price tag. So here's the necessary mojo for that:



Okay, so onto local poker news. I have moved on from playing poor poker to taking horrible runner-runner beats when I'm a 90% favorite in hands. That's a lovely change. After reading PokerGrub's blog, I can at least take a little solace in the fact that I'm not alone.

Tuesday I played one of the local ring games and was a little rusty. Tried playing a little Power Poker, forgetting of course that when you play PowerPoker against people who call with anything, you are up against the PowerPoker kryptonite. But I was at least happy with the fact that my reads were usually on point, even if I ended up on the wrong end of things a few times. Thursday night I went to play in the weekly tournament series at Lucky's. I had come in 23rd out of 56 the week before when I got absolutely no cards. It's become very apparent that if you have at least tripled up by the time you get to level two in this thing, you are in serious trouble. This time I came out on top of my game. I went out on level two when I got my first real hand of the night, pocket Aces. I raised and got called by a girl who had somehow accumulated a lot of chips, but I was new to the table. Flop came Q94 and felt a sense of impending doom. She was first to act and moved me all-in. I called and she turned over J9, spiked another nine on the turn and that was all she wrote for me. I watched a little longer and figured out she had gotten all those chips by bad beating people all night. I'd love her move if I thought for even a minute that she knew she was making a power play. Oh well.

So on Thursday's first hand I get a small suited Ace in the cutoff with five other limpers. Ten high flop checks all the way around so I try and take it down and get one caller. He stays with me to the river and my Ace high takes it over his King-Queen. I bluff the next two pots with draws and still take them down. So in the first three hands I've basically doubled up. At that point James comes over to let me know he's busted out already. The very next hand I get Ace-King in middle position. There's an early position raiser who gets called by the guy sitting next to me. Blinds are 25/50 and she's made it T200. I've played with her a few times now and she's a very solid player (and #1 in the points standings overall) but I sense a little weakness in her hand. I reraise up to T500, she calls and the other guy moves in over the top of that with his last 100 in chips. We both call and the pot is laying at T1875. The flop comes K 4 3 rainbow and I have about T900 remaining so when she checks, I move all-in. I had her on a pair between 77-JJ and after my push she gets out of the way. The other guy turns up QJ offsuit and after she sees my hand she kind of acknowledges she was beat after the flop, so I feel good about my read on her. He proceeds to run out 10-Ace for Broadway and I'm left with my 900 which is about what I started with.

He gets wild and takes down a few more big pots from other people and someone gets moved into the seat on my left, suddenly I'm stuck between two big stacks. For the next two hours I never get my stack above T1400 but manage to duck and weave my way out of trouble until I just miss the final table, going out in 11th. I went out with Ace-Jack versus Ace-five suited, and he hit his five on the flop, picked up his draw on the turn and I never improved. At least I'm accumulating enough points to get into the final freeroll.

I then went over to play some more ring game with the guys and promptly had Aces cracked by pocket tens when I got Richard to move into me and he caught a running Q-9 to make a straight. A few more tough beats and I was busted to the tune of about $175, so I decided I'd had enough. Still happy to be playing generally well, and definitely a marked improvement over my play from August.

Still dealing with some illness in the family and whatnot, so poker has been about the last thing on my list which has contributed to a lack of posting. Hopefully things can get back to normal soon.

That's all for now, I'm sure I'll have something more constructive than bad beats to post soon.

At least I hope...