hot sauce

a semi-interesting hand at oaks 6/12 the other day: two limps, a weirdo (and by weirdo, I mean precisely, aggressive in spots when it's clearly unwarranted, passive elsewhere) raises, SB calls, getting an anticipated 9-1 I call in BB with Qd7d, the limpers call.

flop (10 sb, 5 players) is Qc2h3h

checks to PFR who bets, sb folds, I c/r, limpers fold and PFR calls.

turn (7 bb, 2 players) Ah

I bet, he thinks in an agonizing manner for some time and calls.

river (9 bb, 2 players), non-heart blank, I immediately bet and he again tanks for a while, then folds AK face up. I shrug and flip up my junk. I did this impulsively, and it may have been a mistake--later, when I raised preflop with AA, flopped a set and got no callers on my flop bet, I showed that, too--or, at least, impolitic, because the weirdo battened down the hatches and mucked everything for an hour.

but this exchange did set up a subsequent play, in the unwarranted aggression vein alluded to supra, i.e.: I check-called the whole way with K8 on a K-high board, while he fired every street with a naked ace.

bankroll: $3,094
indigestion: meatless lenten friday
soundtrack: new ghostface yo!

free sudoku

couple days off. lot of oysters in the fridge, have realized a residual aptitude for shucking.

wasana=fuckin' a. cool. what up duet.

good day to be a san franciscan.

bankroll: status fucking quo
indigestion: as good as can be expected after eating lunch at in-n-out
soundtrack: poison, "every rose has its thorn"

zowie

won a 320-person mtt today. was lucky in key spots, twice flopped two pair vs AA, etc., but generally happy with how I played. here was a key moment, with the acknowledgement that this is a basic insight, but appeared new to me:

with blinds at 800/1600 and about 44 players left, I had 35k chips, about average; the button had 28k and the big blind (irrelevant) say 12k. the big blind was away from the table. the button raised to 4k, and I immediately realized that the button would raise an incredibly wide range here, just trying to grab the blinds, and four off the bubble, with a good stack, he could not call a large reraise without a premium hand. so I pushed, and he folded. I had the Q6 offsuit. this is a pretty basic hand, but it was significant to me because it required me to empathize successfully and act on a conviction about empathy.

also, chris ballard=good writer.

banrkroll: $2,413 morrisons
indigestion: fast and abstinence
soundtrack: "loose lips," kimya dawson

dilemma

in which it becomes clear that L thinks a poker lifestyle is a colossal waste of time, and worse, morally suspect...

rem sequence

I'm playing NLHE at my grandmother's apartment in manhattan, and a love-hate relationship has evolved between me and the four seat, who very closely resembles a laggy but thinking, dapper, egyptian gentleman who put the wood to a 6/12 table at oaks a month back.

so the egyptian open-raises to 1800 (with the blinds at 1/2, this seems excessive, but causes no commotion), a fishy MP calls, and I look down to find three separate hands: KcTc, JdTd, and Ks6c. it occurs to me that, if I could combine these hands to form black kings, I would happily play--and though, according to the internal logic of the dream, this is unethical, it's clear no one will notice. I push together my kings, call the raise [If you're going to cheat this egregiously, at least reraise.--Ed.] and begin counting out chips when the flop arrives, nastily, AQ6 all hearts. Apparently, I tank while pondering this board, because when I look up again, it has come running JT of spades, and has been checked to me on the river. MP has folded, pre-emptively. I check behind, the egyptian shows KJ, no hearts, and we chop it up.

quite put-upon, I begin a lenghty harangue of the dealer, a middle-aged chinese woman. (in this I was influenced, most probably, by the grandiloquent, performative language of the drawing room that forms much of the action in The Idiot.) I announce that the dealer has cost me this massive pot, as I would have pushed the flop. I imply connivance and dishonesty, question her motives, etc. finally, she asks my name, and I tell her. she produces a styrofoam cup of coffee, light and sweet, dips three fingers inside and, in the Orthodox style of benediction, curses me.

L thinks it is a dream about control, but I'm casting about for alternate theories.

bankroll: $2,491 capuanos (thanks to GP for reminding me of the Mighty Quinn's tradition of appending a ballplayer's surname to his bankroll in his Daily News columns; I intend to crib this custom.)
indigestion: found a good falafel joint, finally.
soundtrack: how come no one told me about young jeezy before now?

impatient

open letter to mike leraris: slowplaying is a deceptive tool used to extract bets from tight players. at the 2/2 table at the st petersburg kennel club, it is not recommended strategy.

also, sklansky says if you're sort of drunk it's OK to play K4o.

jacksonville

monumental badness early this AM; silly stuff like JJ vs KK on a KKJ board, set over set, etc. sleepless night in a courtyard marriott bed reviewing the latter disaster in my mind, wondering how to get away from 99 vs a turn raise on an 9JA2r board. (for those interested: I open-raised in MP with 99, cutoff 3-bet, all folded, I called. flop went bet-call, turn went bet-raise... I guess I was putting him on AK that waited for the turn to pop? anyhow I 3-bet and he capped... at that point the sinking JJ feeling manifested.) and so when you're sleeping on the ground floor of a chain hotel in an office park--no, not even an office park but a hotel park, if you can envision such a thing; springhill suites stacked alongside la quintas, oppressive atmosphere of business travel and complimentary contintental breakfasts, unreal city, etc.--sleeplessly, abrasive sheets and whirr of the parking lot, you start to wonder.

indigestion: horrocious
soundtrack: 'jacksonville,' sufjan stevens, natch
bankroll: $2,558

the thing is, even when you're running good, poker is eye-clawingly boring. mcmanus famously described the wsop as 'hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror;' rkk, in an elegant chiasmus, once desribed my life as 'years of terror highlighted by moments of boredom.'
won a decent-sized pot at 5/10 online today, straight flush vs queens full. we capped the turn and river, and afterward, somebody typed into the chatbox, 'that hand makes me contemplate suicide.' I found myself nodding, sedately. that would be a reasonable thing to contemplate, yes.

indigestion: no meat since monday.
soundtrack: 'don't let our youth go to waste,' galaxie 500 cover
rollo: $3,023