Poker is not a linear endeavor. Unlike building a house, you don’t pour a foundation, put up the frame, add the siding, and work the finishing touches until you get to the point where you have a finished product. It’s a lot more like a Sissyphean task, where you think you are making progress, only [...]
The hand began innocently enough. After one weak player limped, a NL player who had come to our game raised. Two people cold-called, the player to my right went all-in for one bet, and I found pocket jacks on the button. With this action, I didn’t want to pump it preflop; with the players involved, [...]
The one god thing I can say is that the vast majority of players would not have lasted as long as I did. I got to Artichoke Joe’s late for the morning tournament, but there was an open seat in the $6/$12 game, so I took it. I had a known bad/loose player on my [...]
It was an awful session. Just awful. No, I wasn’t suffering bad beats. I was just completely, utterly card dead. An hour went by and I’d done little more than post blinds. I’d seen one pocket pair (8s), and most of the rest was trash, trash, trash. I didn’t hit any of the random big [...]
I’ve been playing a bit more at Lucky Chances in recent weeks. I’d been getting involved in some tough games at Artichoke Joe’s, despite the claim of day games being “soft,” and despite the additional jackpot drop at Lucky Chances (they take $2, in addition to the $3 rake), I thought a change of scenery [...]
It was a good way to start the week: Win the Monday tournament at Artichoke Joe’s. I would have been happy to chop at the final table, as is common. I made it to the final table with about a middle-of-the-road chip stack. The chip leader was on my immediate right, and the next biggest [...]
Today’s roundup tournament was interesting, and not just because I finished in the money, with 5 roundup discs. No, it’s interesting because of three hands in which I got very, very lucky. I also made one bad decisions that cost me a better finish. I began the tournament completely card dead. The only hand I [...]
Poker players sometimes use the term “Hit & run” derisively to describe a player who comes in, hits big, and leaves. Such an event is more likely in no-limit, where it’s not hard to get all the money in quickly, but less common in limit, where betting is, well, limited. Yet it happened to me [...]
Was playing in the weekly Monday morning tournament at Artichoke Joe’s. It’s a limit tournament, with the typical 15-minute rounds and non-deep stacks intended to get the tournament over in about 2 1/2 hours, starting with 5 tables of 11. Got short stacked early, came back, got down to the final 2 tables (top 9 [...]
Decided at the last minute to get off my behind and go play tonite. And for the first time in awhile, I had a decent session. But it was not easy, and I had to really test my patience. I ended up playing for about 3 1/2 hours, but I won something like 3 or [...]