Hey, Bend Over And Grab That Bar Of Soap

FullTiltPoker Game #4549444139: Table Wilkes - $0.25/$0.50 - No Limit Hold'em - 22:38:07 ET - 2007/12/18
Seat 3: flydogg007 ($34.05)
Seat 4: Chewyjd ($31.75)
Seat 6: lifesagrind ($48.50)

Kacori posts the small blind of $0.25
Mr_R_Hand posts the big blind of $0.50
The button is in seat #8

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to lifesagrind [Ac As]

tsduo folds
flydogg007 raises to $1
Chewyjd calls $1
SkiDooSledder folds
lifesagrind raises to $4
jausbrey folds
cladower folds
Kacori folds
Mr_R_Hand folds
flydogg007 folds
Chewyjd has 15 seconds left to act
Chewyjd raises to $31.75, and is all in
lifesagrind calls $27.75
Chewyjd shows [Ad 3s]
lifesagrind shows [Ac As]
*** FLOP *** [2d 4d 5h]
*** TURN *** [2d 4d 5h] [Js]
*** RIVER *** [2d 4d 5h Js] [Jh]
Chewyjd shows a straight, Five high
lifesagrind shows two pair, Aces and Jacks
Chewyjd wins the pot ($62.25) with a straight, Five high

Understanding Disappointment

The plan was to end my two month tournament sabbatical with the three big blogger tournaments last night. The Big Game, The Skill Game, and ThePokerGrinder. Alas due to familial obligations I only arrived back home in time for the last one on the list.

Much has been said, and many bloggers have bitched, about the quality of play in blogger tournaments. As of last night I have come to the following conclusions about poker bloggers. Just because you write about poker, doesn't mean you know how to play poker. At least not play poker well.

This is in reality no different than playing in any other tournament online. You have your good players, and you have your bad players. The problem lies in the expectation that poker bloggers should be, as a whole, skewed more toward the good player side.

The poker blogging community has within it, it's own microcosm of society. You have your elders followed by the middle agers and finally the children. Everyone must remember that these "children" play in the tournaments as well. Hopefully one day they will grow and learn but some, well some are just born with an extra chromosome. There is nothing you can do for them developmentally but be supportive of their endeavors.

These are the ones you often hear about, but not always. Everyone is capable of making that fatal mistake. Just try not to let it be you.

Dreamland

Have you ever awoken screaming from a nightmare? How about a nightmare that involved poker? Were you playing with monsters, or were you up against monster hands? How about every time you bluffed heads up, your opponent had the nuts? Did you blow off your entire stack bluffing into the nuts?

Have you?

You have had that dream... well welcome to my reality. I've made some piss poor decisions before but tonight takes the cake. I blew $80 at a $50 table. All heads up, and I had the 80 in front of me before my opponent bought in as a short stack. Sure, he got lucky and caught cards, but I also ignored the obvious signs of my opponent having me beat. Truly a matter of ego outweighing common sense tonight.

A Months End

Would you look at that? The graph actually ends at a point higher than it started.

I know... I'm amazed as well.

I took the NL cash game seriously this month (ie. not a single SNG played) and I have to say I enjoyed playing them. I've had a love hate, well... mostly hate , relationship with the NL cash game in the past but making the switch to full ring and not worrying about the money I may lose or win really seemed to help me.

Since I'm all about the money when it comes to playing this game, I've got to look at whether the SNG's or the cash games were more profitable for me. In the month of October I played 10.72 hours at the $24 turbos for a profit of $235.70. That comes out to $21.99 an hour which is nothing to sneeze at. At the .25/.50 NL game I played 16.57 hours in November for a profit of $338.60. That comes out to $20.43 an hour. That puts these two forms of poker at about dead even for me on the profitability scale.

With that in mind I'm going to stick with the cash games again this month. I didn't miss playing the SNG's at all which also surprised me. At least I have a backup if things turn sour for me.