Update On Land Split Matrix

In The News Again

Press Release From County Supervisor

Press Release From County Supervisor

why I am not posting too much lately...

ouch. Wrist surgery has left me numb for a week. Now that I can type, I do so in short spurts for the next two weeks.

Interesting Local Builder Quote

In The News...

Shaddup and Play Already

It’s early on in Dashiell Hammett’s first novel, Red Harvest, when the Continental Op (Hammett’s nameless protagonist) pinches the bank teller, young Albury, for the murder of Donald Willsson. Various clues lead Hammett to conclude Albury to be the trigger man. More than anything, though, it was the young man’s eagerness to tell the Op everything about himself (including his infatuation with femme fatale Dinah Brand), that heightened the detective’s suspicion. Just before the Op coaxes Albury to confess his guilt, he spells out for him where the young killer went wrong: “You talked too much, son. You were too damned anxious to make your life an open book for me. That’s a way you amateur criminals have. You’ve always got to do the frank and open business.”

Low limit poker players are also, in their own way, amateur criminals. We try to deceive and mislead and out-clever each other. Sometimes we get away with it. Sometimes we give ourselves away. One of the worst mistakes we can make is the same one Albury makes -- to talk too much. With every word we offer free information about ourselves. Not to mention divert our attention in potentially detrimental ways.

When I first started playing online for play chips, I greatly enjoyed the socializing that went on in the chat box. Made some fast friends there. Even met one in Vegas last year when we both happened to have trips planned at the same time. Once I moved over to real money, though, I quickly discovered fewer players seemed interested in the barbering. I soon lost the urge to engage others, and now largely avoid the commentary altogether. Sure, I’ll concede a good play with a “gh” now and then. Mostly I’ll zip it, though, keeping dormy and letting the cards do all the conversatin’.

I realized this week how non-purposeful the jabber can be when I sat down at a table on PokerStars and saw a fellow whose screen name included “Fjodor” sitting to my right. On Stars, of course, you get to upload a picture for your avatar, and his icon happened to be the head of Dostoevsky, taken from the same famous painting of him by Vasily Perov that I had included in an earlier series of posts about one of the Russian writer’s novels. After ten hands or so, I couldn’t resist and so typed in the chat box “hey Dostoevsky . . . just read The Gambler.” No response. Did he speak ????????? . . . ? I think his hometown may well have been in Russia, actually.

In any event, for some reason talking to Fyodor inspired me to chat more than I usually do during the day’s play. No lengthy conversations, just things like asking a player from Jackson which state he was from or handing a good-natured dig to the fellow who cracked my kings with 42-offsuit. By the end of the day I had broken even, but felt certain that I’d played less well because my concentration had been scrambled unnecessarily by all the banter.

I know some players can handle the chat and in fact make it a fairly significant part of their game. Not me, though. I gotta remember to button up. Save the “frank and open business” for the blog. Less apt to get me in trouble there.

Crying in my beer

The blogger freeroll is over. Or it must be by now. I was unable to bring myself to watch the ending. I was devastated. Nearly 2500 entries and I played damn solid poker. I did not win any races all night because I never had to get in one. I got my money in ahead every time. I missed one pot for 10% of my stack because I called an all-in from a short stack with KJ and lost to his AQ. Other than that, I made one big weak questionable fold.

A player who was tight, raises big and another player gets all-in with him. He flips over JJ and wins to double up. He is suddenly more aggressive. I have AKs in the BB and when I raise it, he comes over the top all-in for ½ my stack. At this point in the tournament, I am DOUBLE average (Q of 2) and have PLENTY of chips and time. I make a very weak fold putting him on a BIG pair. He then starts going hog wild with the all in and about 30 minutes later is taken down by a QQ. He had 72o. Did he use his image to bully me off a potentially huge hand? Maybe, but I think it was a solid decision. Don't eat the peppered beef.

Then I go card dead. Fast forward to 125 left and I am stealing enough to survive. I play 56s in the BB and ESCAPE from the LP player who flopped a nut flush. I am freakin’ Houdini on that hand. But for the first time in the tournament, I am below average.

I may be on the ropes, but it gets worse as I am moved to a monster table that at one point has Absinthe, studio glyphic, Bill Rini, and is brutal. I make my way to 95th and can see a chance to squeak across the line drawn at 54. My Q is low, my M is brutal, but I have yet to make a large mistake in over 2 hours. After folding what was 7 hands in a row with a 2 in them, I get a gift. QQ in LP. Frank goes all in, but only has 1600 chips. Glyphic goes all-in and I have to assume that that since we both have about the same size stack (he was slightly larger) and our M is SO low, that he can do this with Any pair or big Ace. I feel I am good here and make the call to see his beautiful 66. The flop has not 1 but 2 aces, but I don’t care about the 1600 anymore, I need glyphic’s chips (and he needs mine). A 6 on the turn and IGHN and glyphic goes on to cash (I assume). I could not even speak. I walked away from the computer and spent the rest of the evening with the kids.

I thought it would effect me for quite some time, but despite the disappointment. DISSAPOINTMENT!!! !#$&(@#$@#$^ I am ok now. Anyways, despite the disappointment, I played some mean poker baby. And for that I can be proud

or content

or I take some solace. F**K.

Well, I refuse to feel sorry for myself anyways. 94th. Not much of a trophy eh? Biggestron set the tempo days earlier when he said “I am going to chip up early or go home early. I don’t want to bubble a freeroll.” Indeed. That was my goal too. But sometime after that first hand was dealt, I knew I was going to play like it was the freakin’ world series.

Mark my words (please don’t), ONE OF THESE DAYS I AM GOING TO WIN SOMETHING. And not in Moneymaker fashion either (not that there is anything wrong with that). By playing a mean game of poker and getting a break at the end.

I may not post for a few days as I need to get some wrist surgery. (Typing accident. No, really!) But you can rest assured that I am gathering thoughts and I’ll be back. Oh, you can count on that. I’ll be back. CURSE YOU POKER STARSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS...

p.s. I hope glyphic won it.

Once again on the precipice

So, I played a 3 table MTT last night with an interesting twist. Up to ONE reuby in levels 1 and 2, then an add-on after level 2.

As usual, based on the fact that the add-on was the full 10k in chips at half the price, the mathematically correct thing to do (usually) is play very tight, finish even a bit above 10k and take the 10k add-on. Survival. In this case, however, you would also like to double up once or twice at no risk if you can.

I flopped 2 pair twice and took down small pots. I flopped sets twice and played them strong, only to chase away action. It may have been overkill, but I had decide to play strong on any flop I hit.

Let's review the rules:
1. Don’t eat the peppered beef (no calling all-ins in early levels)
2. Table tight, play loose. Table loose play tight. This table was loose pre-flop , tight post flop. So, I was tight pre-flop and looser post flop.
3. Don't plays drawing hands our of position.
4. When in doubt, tight
5. If you are FTA (first to act), raise or fold. I broke this rule about 4 times, and had to fold pre-flop about 4 times. like getting your hand slapped.
6. Its ok to fold to a raise. I got away from a big one this way. and was correct.
7. Don’t get caught with crumbs. (Don’t get caught with nothing but a draw)
8. watch stacks
9. watch patterns
10 find pressure points
11. big pots are for big hands
12. Gauge bets to drive out other hands or take advantage of worse hands.
13. Never stab at the dark (aka no dark tunnel bets)
14. Don't underbet a hit flop.

This is, for me, mechanically correct poker. And its how I played last night. And its how I bubbled.

I think the BIG difference from playing mechanically correct and playing creatively is not playing 85o pre-flop. Its letting a lesser hand see a turn card. Sometimes even a river card at the right price (for them). I NEVER did this. In fact I took very few chances at all. Each time I flopped a big hand, I hope someone had caught SOMETHING. ANYTHING. But each time, I was alone with my big hand, unwilling to give anyone any rope.

I played correct, but uninspired poker.

I did, however, get to witness first hand a "pressure player" that operated under the doubleas (see link) formula. I have a much better grasp of this now. "It's about relative stack sizes, not pot sizes", he told me. I think its starting to sink in.

I also got to congratulate Motown's own "ballgame" who final tabled the stars big event last week for $50k. Wow.

I remember something from my stand up days. The more thoroughly you have memorized your act, the more freedom you have to deviate from the path. Because you always can get back to your act at any time smoothly. Poker is the same way. Now that I have the base set of my rules established, I can begin to play more creatively.

Biggest change I wish to make: I wish to SLOW DOWN and think after a flop and decide “what is the best amount to bet here” instead of applying a formula or 1/3, ½ or pot.

Mohave County P&Z Land Split Matrix Proposal...

NL tournament Strategy from 1995 vs. 2006

To recap strategy from a DECADE ago:

Rule 1: Play only very good starting hands. (group 1 from EP, group 1-2 from other positions)

Rule 2: If you are the first one in, enter with a raise. (in early levels, raise preflop 5%-10% instead of 3xBB and post-flop make the raise % of stack instead of % of pot)

Rule 3: If there are other callers in before you, raise if you have a large pocket pair, otherwise call. (and by large pocket pair, the rules was QQ or better. Or if you’re TJ, KK or better. You did not CALL and all-in pre-flop with JJ).

Rule 4: Use caution in responding to a raise.

Rule 5: When you hit a flop you like, bet big and raise big. (you need to accumulate chips and because you are playing fewer hands, you need the hands you play to pay off)

Rule 6: When you hit a good draw, bluff if the conditions are right. Call only if the one-card draw odds are correct. (i.e. semi-bluff on the FLOP not the turn and give it up if the turn is a blank and the new odds are against you.)

Rule 7: Late in the tournament, fight for the blinds with big cards.

Rule 8: Treat your last few chips as though they were precious, because they are. (Note that using the modern day comparison, we are talking an M<2 or a Q of .1)

What is different a decade later?

Rule 1: Playing tight is a great way to go, but the fields are SO large now that waiting for group 1 hands creates a “slippery slope of Q”. Meaning that you win just enough hands to “chase average”. If your Q is always below 1, its going to be harder to get to the money in a large field of over 500. Something unheard of in 1995.

Adjustment: Play speculative hands from LP in the hopes of hitting a big hand or a big draw. You will need to push marginal advantages if you wish to accumulate chips against 1000+ players. You also need to get away from these hands quickly when you are up against tight players.

Rule 2: Players today are less likely to play for a big raise pre-flop in level 1 to win 3xBB chips. If the starting stack is 1500 and the blinds are 10/20 and you make it 75-150 to go, you may get no action at a tight table. (Interesting point though is that you would quickly find out just who is loose and who is tight.) If you flop MP or better, you are now going to follow up with not 200 (2/3 pot sized bet if you have 1 caller), but more like 400 (which is 30% of the remaining stack size). That is big pressure to try to apply at level 1. Many times this works out of the gate and you can get some chips. And many other times VERY LOOSE players call you and draw on you.

Adjustment: You must mentally tag which players will lay down hands and which will NOT and play your hand accordingly. Of course, if you correctly tag a loose player and flop TP and he calls you down while making 2 pair on the turn, you are going broke, but so be it.

Rule 3: Not much change here. Don’t play baby pairs up front, call from late.

Adjustment: I think we add suited connectors in late position, especially if they contain a 9 or a Ten.

Rule 4: This is still true in 1-2 or 2-5 NLHE live cash games in Vegas.

Adjustment: Not everyone is a fish. Despite the LOADS of bad play out there, I think you need to respect this rule. What was one of Steve Dannenmann’s rules? “It is only a small mistake to fold to a raise”.

Rule 5: The classic tight aggressive. Play few hands and when you hit make others calls as a dog. Too bad too many players are now “loose pre-flop, tight post flop”. This means that it’s less common to isolate to one opponent pre-flop.

Adjustment: Playing the speculative hands from late position adjusts for some of this in terms of expected EV, but you also must be able to figure out if you are behind vs. someone who just “feels” pot committed. Pros do this very well. You must do it well too.

Rule 6: As the tournament progresses, this gets more and more applicable. But I rarely bluff at all in the first half of a tournament. If it’s a 180, I wait until 90 or so are gone. At that point, the remaining players feel vested in the tournament and stop throwing chips around like water.

Rule 7: Late in the tournament, fight for the blinds with big cards. As good today as it was then. BUT, in today’s large fields, there are always loose players who accumulate large chips stacks by playing lots of hands and getting luckier than the other loose players playing lots of hands. When you run into that stack in the late stage, you need to up your base steal hand requirements from any 2 to something viable. That way, when he makes a big re-reaise with broadway, you can crush him.

Rule 8: I think the modern day equivalent of this is to understand your M and Q in relation to the field size. If your Q<.5 (even doubling up wont get you to average), you need to think about pushing very marginal edges. You can’t fold your way to the money in these large fields, nor can you double up just to live for another hour. That hour still won’t get you to the Promised Land.

Local advice for sellers

Dostoevsky is Not Considered Summer Reading (Pt. I)

There’s a New Yorker cartoon in which a guy reading a book on the beach is approached by a policeman. “I’m sorry, sir,” the cop says to him, “but Dostoevsky is not considered summer reading. I’ll have to ask you to come with me.”

I thought of that cartoon last week as I read Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Gambler -- one of the 19th-century Russian novelist’s lesser known novels, although certainly his most popular in the poker world. References to The Gambler pop up in many poker books, particularly “literary” ones like Anthony Holden’s Big Deal, the late David Spanier’s The Hand I Played, and James McManus’s Positively Fifth Street. The novel is set in the fictional German city of Roulettenburg -- kind of a 19th-century European version of Vegas -- where the main character, a tutor named Alexey Ivanovitch, unsuccessfully battles his obsession with the game after which the city is named. There is one card game that comes up occasionally in the novel, a game called trente et quarante (a.k.a. rouge et noir) that is essentially a kind of roulette using six decks of playing cards rather than a wheel and a ball. (You can still get a game of trente et quarante in Monte Carlo, apparently.) However, roulette is the game that Alexey plays the most, and that’s the game about which Dostoevsky (himself a roulette addict) has the most interesting things to say.

Anyone at all serious about poker will be quick to point out that poker ain’t roulette. Some go so far as to distinguish poker from gambling altogether, insisting that it’s a skill game wherein the better-equipped players always win out over time. I like how Miller/Sklansky/Malmuth treat this subject in the opening sections of Small Stakes Hold ’em. They assert that, in fact, “poker is gambling,” and the schmo who says it ain’t “does not understand poker as well as he should.” Poker is gambling because it always involves some measure of uncertainty, particularly with regard to the cards. Sure, at times we might be uncertain about our opponents’ play or holdings, but better players eventually can get a line on those things. Yet even the very best poker player cannot get a line on precisely what card is gonna come on the turn or river. (Raise yer paw if you’ve also lost a 20+ BB pot to a river one-outer . . . . There we go.) So while in poker you can (as Miller/Sklansky/Malmuth explain) play in such a way so “that your expectation can be positive,” when you play poker you’re still gambling. That's why The Gambler ultimately touches on so many concepts of interest to poker players.

As a way of responding to the book, I thought I’d focus on a few ideas related to gambling that come up in The Gambler that might be of particular interest to poker players. I’ve pulled out three ideas or concepts, all of which could be made to relate to the “psychology of poker” -- that is, all three concern how our minds work (and, at times, fail to work) when we play. The first has to do with how a particular sequence of hands will affect our thinking regarding what comes next. The second involves the way the game tends to consume us, causing us to forget about everything else besides the “here and now.” The third has to do with issues of control and personal responsibility, and how poker (or any form of gambling) strangely satisfies certain, contradictory desires most of us seem to possess.

I’ll discuss these ideas in separate posts over the next few days. Afterwards you can decide if you want to check out The Gambler yourself. Of course, you’ll want to keep one eye out for the summer reading cops if you do.

How does one donk off $30 bucks with the guys?

Ed's birthday was yesterday and we needed a fun activity that included cigars, gambling, yelling and about $30. So what do you think we played for 5 hours?!





It was quite a treat to come across something of that nature. It was like the first time you played poker. So fun, but you have no idea what you are doing. SO much fun!

Hammer Time

I reached down and grabbed him under the arm and yanked him to his feet. His eyes bugged. Maybe he thought he was dealing with somebody soft. “Listen, pimple face. Just for the fun of it I ought to slap your fuzzy chin all around this room, but I got things to do. Don’t go playing man when you’re only a boy. You’re pretty big, but I’m three sizes bigger and a hell of a lot tougher and I’ll beat the living daylights out of you if you try anything funny again.”

So Mike Hammer tells that young punk Hal Kines early on in Mickey Spillane’s I, the Jury. Such a tactic is familiar to anyone who remembers the playground, where a standard ploy for dealing with bullies is to show them aggression. Having seen so many back down from them before, they often become unsettled by such demonstrations of strength and will back down themselves. Such is the advice we also frequently hear for dealing with overly-aggressive poker players -- wait for the right moment, then come back “over the top” and watch him scurry away as you gather his chips.

Dan Harrington actually calls this play “the Hammer” in the first volume of his Harrington on Hold ’em. “When you see a super-aggressive player move into a pot, and you have some kind of reasonable hand,” writes Harrington, “don’t just call; come over the top with a big raise.” Doing so “takes courage,” says Harrington, but is generally successful because, “paradoxically, super-aggressive players aren’t looking for expensive confrontations.”

Of course, most of us aren’t badasses like Mike Hammer. That means whenever we do grit our teeth and try to bully the bully, we are essentially playing against our true natures. In this situation, if you are normally a conservative player (like Harrington), you find yourself temporarily having to play an unfamiliar role in the hopes of creating a favorable outcome for a particular hand (and perhaps affecting future play by demonstrating to the table that when playing with you they aren’t “dealing with somebody soft”). This kind of performance is much easier said than done for most of us, I’d venture. In a NL tournament (the primary context for Harrington’s advice), opportunities to “drop the Hammer” can come infrequently, making it all the more crucial to be successful when the time comes to do so.

Let’s say you are in a tourney and for the last 4 or 5 orbits a super-aggressive player has been raising preflop anywhere from 2x-4x the BB approximately half of the hands. You’ve seen a couple of showdowns where he’s had to reveal holdings like QT-offsuit or 65-suited, so you know his range of raising hands is damn wide. You’d know that even without having laid eyes on the samples, of course -- no one ever picks up premium hands half the time, even for a single orbit. Now you’re sitting there with a below average stack and you’ve become gripped with the notion that dropping the Hammer on this guy is for you both a desire and a necessity. Like Mike Hammer, who can’t proceed with his investigation until he deals with the Kines kid, you know you probably won’t get much further in the tourney until you deal with your adversary.

Without any obvious tells to guide you, you cannot possibly know when this louse preraises whether he’s hiding J8 or the Hilton sisters. It appears, then, at least three criteria need to be satisfied before making your move:

1. You have a “reasonable” hand. You can’t move in here without packing some kind of weapon with which to fight. You needn’t necessarily have a loaded .45, but a nice-sized cudgel will do. What constitutes a “reasonable” hand is entirely up to you, but it has to be a hand with which you won’t fear a call. Any hand (except kings or aces) fears a reraise, but you should have a decent range of hands that you can play with confidence here if called. If the hand isn’t strong enough for you to withstand a call from the bully, don’t try the move here.

2. You have position. Unless you’re planning an all-in move (thereby negating the significance of position), you have to be later than the bully here in case he does call your reraise. You simply cannot be acting first after the flop, particularly if you have a hand that is at the bottom of your range of “reasonable” hands with which to make this move.

3. No one else is going to enter the hand. This is probably the most crucial factor to consider, as you cannot reasonably expect to drop the Hammer successfully when a third player decides that pot odds make a cold call of your reraise the right play. If a player between you and the bully decides to rereraise, then you make like a tree and get the heck outta there (unless you hold kings or aces, of course). But you cannot allow a third player to call you here. This means knowing something about the tendencies of the players sitting in between you and the bully and betting the right amount to keep them out.

Even knowing these criteria, I generally find dropping the Hammer a difficult move, especially in tourneys. I’ll do it in my low limit ring games where the stakes aren’t as high (and where I’m generally more aggressive myself). However, in tourneys I find it hard to grab the dude under the arm, yank him to his feet, and tell him what I’ll do if he tries anything funny again.

Thursday Quickies I wrote articles in the June is...

Thursday Quickies

I wrote articles in the June issues of Poker Pro Magazine, Bluff, and Poker Player Newspaper. You can pick up Bluff and Poker Pro at bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders. Poker Player Newspaper appears in most card rooms and poker rooms in casinos. You can also visit their site and download the last issue in PDF format.

Here's a few freelance articles of mine that have been recently published in print/online:

2006 WSOP Preview: The $10 Million Man (or Woman) (Las Vegas & Poker Blog)
Longshot wins $3.7 Million WPT Championship (Poker Pro Magazine)
Poker Stars: 5 Million and Counting (Poker Player Newspaper)
Online Poker: Avoiding Distractions (Poker Player Newspaper)
Pauly's Picks: Las Vegas Poker (Las Vegas & Poker Blog)

And here's the Born to Gamble series that has been appearring on the Tao of Poker:

Born to Gamble Part I: Where It All Begins
Born to Gamble Part II: Southbound
Born to Gamble Part III: Midnight Rider
Born to Gamble Part IV: Ramblin' Man

When you get a chance, stop by and check out Flipchip's review of the Palms Poker Room. It's a must read if you have never been to the Palms before.

Now, go check out Spaceman's coverage of the final table of the WPT Mandalay Bay for Bluff Magazine. He's been doing a great job for this event and don't miss out.

Lastly, thanks to Top Gambling Blogs for mentioning the Tao of Poker in their Top 25 Gambling Blogs.

For Crying Out Loud

Is there a more formulaic, rigidly-defined category of storytelling than the bad beat story? The simplest sort of tragedy, that. The hero, a person of decent values and good standing with whom any feeling creature must readily sympathize, lives a life based on sound reasoning and prudence only to meet with undeserved misfortune perpetrated by some chaos-loving villain whose triumph can only be understood to confirm the absence of morality as a determining factor in the ordering of the universe.

In other words, the donkey sucked out.

I suppose one could argue there exist degrees of badness. The victor of the hand could have demonstrated extraordinarily poor judgment of the I’ll-just-use-this-cigarette-lighter-and-see-if-there-be- anything-in-this-here-gas-can variety. Or the stakes could be particularly vast, thereby intensifying the depth of the hero’s fall. Or the brutality could occur at a decisive juncture deep in a tournament, mere hands away from the money, or the big money, or the big big big money.

Still, the song remains the same. A loud, shrill whine to which no one particularly relishes listening.

I thought of this truth today after busting out of yet another WSOP freeroll. This one (on Party) offered 50 spots in a weekend satellite that itself yields a handsome 24 spots this summer (14 in the main event and 10 more in a $2K prelim). The freeroll was capped at 3500 entrants, and after nearly three hours I found myself clinging to life with my usual short-stack and only 150 of us remaining. I had just under 40,000 chips (about half the average stack), having battled a dozen orbits or more with no cards and one of the chip leaders playing very aggressively to my left. The blinds were up to 1500/3000 with 75 for the ante. Finally from middle position I get dealt pocket rockets. The player to my right (UTG+2) limps in and I raise 3x to 9000. As I’d hoped, a fellow in late position decides to reraise me, strangely putting in 15000 which was about 80% of his entire stack. The table folds around to the limper who surprisingly goes all-in with his remaining 39000 (he has me covered by 5000 or so). I make an easy call, as does the late position reraiser.

What do I face with my aces? The late position reraiser has pocket nines, a reasonable holding here. The limper-raiser to my right? K5s.

Who do you think won?

The flop was a headachy 8c 9c 2s, giving the late position player a set. Still, I was way ahead of King Rag and stood to end the hand with 60k or so if things stayed where they were. But the turn brought the 7d and the river the 6d, giving the villain a straight and about 100,000 chips to donate to others somewhere down the road.

So the story (always) goes. I suppose by crying out loud this way I'm hopin’ to pick up and/or provide a crumb of that ol’ Aristotelian katharsis in the telling. In any event, all apologies. For more on the subject, check out "Other People's Bad Beats Are Funny" by Lorinda in the latest issue of Two Plus Two, the Internet Magazine.

home game movie moment

Gets down to what it's all about, doesn't it? Making the wrong move at the right time. And I did. I became more bold in the second half as the blinds escalated and my chip stack did not. Each time I made a move with my entire stack I either got the fold I wanted (like TT vs KQ) or won the showdown. Now we are 5 handed, just before merging to the final table and I have A9d. The MP (a good player) min raises. fold to me and I think for a minute. I decide to call from the SB. The BB folds. The flop is A89. I check knowing that no one is going to credit me with an Ace here so I play it cool. The MP bets 1/2 pot. I come over the top. He quickly calls with his set of Aces, thinking I must have a straight draw. IGHN.

I noted that I took too many stabs at pots in levels 3-6 where I left myself exposed THREE times to a check -raise or a bet over the top. My one attempt to play a pot away from someone was aborted. The players were agressive post flop, almost to a fault, and I adjust to play with the grain instead of against it. BAD, but fixable.

I'm posting these GIS maps to help you better unde...

More charts...

Preliminary numbers for May 2004

ABC's LOST

So they DID go "The Prisoner" route in the finale! Cool.

The Long Goodbye

Had a fairly lousy session of limit two days ago. A better detective would’ve perceived the first hand as a clue of things to come. I get As Qd in the BB and watch as a player in middle position raises and the table folds around to me. I smooth call and the flop comes Qc 8h Jd. I check, my opponent bets, I raise, and he calls. Now I don’t know this gee from a horse’s caboose, but he does appear to have gotten the message of strength from my check-raise. The turn is a blank (2c). I bet and he timidly calls, making the pot 6.25 big bets. The river brings a dreaded king, so I check-call him to see I’ve been three-outed when he shows the friggin’ Kc Qh.

So I begin by dropping 4 big bets to a cold deck. A couple of orbits later I get KK cracked for another decent-sized pot. (In fact, before I was done I’d be absurdly dealt kings four times, yet would only win once with them for an overall net of -9.25 BB on the four hands.) That I subsequently started to play some dicey starting hands out of position (ace-rag, two-gappers) only aggravated the situation further. We’ve all been there -- a bad beat or two and suddenly your otherwise-solid game takes a dive. Adding to the trouble is the fact that as your short stack becomes shorter, other players tend not to respect your raises (a factor contributing to my failures with King Kong, probably, as I was usually up against multiple opponents). (Incidentally, I’d argue this phenomenon to be as true in limit as it is in no-limit, despite the fact that theoretically it makes no difference in limit that your opponent has 30 more BB than you when the two of you are dueling for a pot -- as long as you have enough to play out the hand.) For all my misfortune, however, I definitely skilled my way to that losing session, realizing along the way that one of my biggest flaws is not knowing when to get away from a table that isn’t working for me.

Finding a new table online is laughably easy, so there’s no reason to stick around and play at a table where your image has evolved into that of a much lesser player. Yet there I’ll invariably stay, sometimes even as all of the players around the table have left and been replaced by new ones equally happy to receive my chips. It’s not even that I want to win my money back from the particular palookas that took it from me. Rather, it’s like I’m saying “Okay, Table 95987 (Real Money) . . . you took my twenty bucks and I’m gonna stay here ’til get every cent back if I have to play 65-offsuit UTG to do it . . . ! Okay, until I get half of it back . . . . All right then, until I land one nice pot. Fine, gimme one blind-steal for chrissake . . . .”

At the beginning of Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye, Philip Marlowe talks about how he ends up getting involved with Terry Lennox against his own better judgment. “I’m supposed to be tough,” he says, “but there was something about the guy that got me.” From there proceeds his lengthy involvement with a case that in the end he knows he would have been better off avoiding altogether. Marlowe lets down his guard for a just a tic and before long finds himself in too deep.

It’s the opposite for me. “I’m supposed to be tough,” I tell myself, and thus refuse to say adios when I should. I need to develop a strategy here . . . perhaps some mechanical marker that tells me when I reach a certain point at a particular table that taking a hike is the right thing to do (and not an admission of less-than-manhood). In other words, some way to avoid the long goodbye. Suggestions will be most appreciated.