Just a Story

I haven't told a stream of consciousness rant/story in a while so here we go.  The last time I played at The World Famous I was in a game that was just beautiful.  This guy played 15 hands straight mostly raising and then just snap quit mid-orbit.  That's fine, I had these other beauties to play with.  Here are the hands where I did the exact same crazy thing and felt like a complete champion.

I open the CO with the ace and the queen and the small blind three bets.  He gets me heads up (or should I say I get him headsup?  It's not clear) and we go to the flop.  To be clear he is a bad  NL player trying to adjust and is quite snug here.

AJJ

And he checks.  That's right, AJJ and he checks.  So I bet.  And he calls.  Now wait for it.

4

He checks and I snap check behind him.  That's right.

6

He angrily half-smoke bets and I almost don't even go through with the raise plan because I mean what am I hoping to beat here AceTen but whatever I raise and he hems and haws and eventually calls and...we chop.  Lol.  About 4 hands later.

The small blind, a not super awesome Asian woman, knocks her chicken wings and coors light (that's right) on the floor.  I proceed to open the King and the Jack and it folds to her and she...three bets me.  I say to the dealer "she three bet me with her food on the floor" and he nods sheepishly and I say "OK, I guess there's no stopping now" and call.

KT3cc

And she checks.  That's right, she checks.  So I bet and as she's calling I say to Sam "I'm gonna do the same thing buddy" and he looks at me like "wut" and I just smile.

X

The turn is a small card that doesn't make a flush and she checks and I turbo check back.

J

Aiyah!  She checks again.  I bet, she calls and cannot believe her misfortune with the ace and the king.  This is how these people play;  this is why I don't think I should play 60 or 1/2 anymore.

Rough Stats

I spent some time looking over my stats for the last, well like 15 months.  I don't have that many hours but it's just not pretty.  In 2013 I played 740 hours of LHE and won 232 bets.  That's not bad, I suppose.  I mean it's not great, but it's something that can happen.  The problem is that I broke even.  So far this year it's more of the same.  I've played 43 hours, won 67 bets and am up about 1300.  So over all that's:

783 hours.  +299 bets.  +$1300

Obviously my results in the 1/2 were horrible.  Looking over it the 60 wasn't that great either.  What this has made me think about is the simple fact that I never really got that good at poker.  I mean sure in the GRAND SCHEME of things I am great at the limit hold them, but when you get right down to it I am not as good as the players who are going to be crushing the 1/2 and white chips games for the next few years.  And even those guys I honestly don't know how much they are going to make.  People just don't make huge glaring mistakes over and over and over again in those games.  In order to have a win rate that doesn't demand a 1200 bet bankroll you have to play just so freaking good.  You need to start with solid GTO understanding, an then you have to make substantial exploitative adjustments vs most of the players in the game.  In effect you have to show a profit against people like me.  And I'm not saying that's impossible to do, but it's not exactly easy.  I had the same problem when I stepped up to real games online.  My wr/hand basically was a straight line down from big to slightly negative as the number of players in the game dropped.  Basically I never really learned how to play in aggressive, wide range situations.  This was my own fault, but it was also the poker player's curse.  My goal was always to put myself in the best game possible, to try to win as much money as I could.  And you know what?  That worked super well for most of my career.  But I was usually not challenged at the table, and if I was I spent my of my career just looking for a better spot.  Short term this is obviously the right thing to do.  Long term in today's ecosystem?  If you take that approach you're gonna get stuck around 40/80, or maybe even below.  Those games just aren't as good as they used to be most of the time.

So what am I saying?  I guess I'm saying I didn't work hard enough and the game sort of passed me by.  Do I feel bad about that?  Sure.  But am I happy I'm out?  Definitely.

Only in SoCal

It's been.  Well, it's been the longest time ever.  I haven't been playing much; just a few hours here and there mostly on the weekends.  And it's gone kind of good actually, but I don't know I'm up against the same things I was always up against.  It takes like an hour to get into a game and once I do get into one it's full of jerkelfaces and the money somehow bothers me more now than it used to (even though I'm effectively infinitely rolled now) so I end up playing so small it's maybe not even worth it in fact it can't be to play for 3 hours when you add an hour on each end and 60 miles of driving and well yeah.

But you know what I saw today?  I saw some crazy shit.  First of all on my way to the gym at lunch I saw a Cleveland Browns vanity plate.  Definitely a life time first for me.  But that's not what I want to talk about.  When I got to the gym which is at a mall I saw, and I am not making this up, a woman cleaning the fire hydrant in the middle of the outdoor mall.  She wasn't doing maintenance.  She wasn't testing it or anything like that.  She had a rag and she was wiping it down, making sure it looks nice for all the good little money spenders going out to spend their pay checks.

For some reason it just made me want to cry.  I mean, really....is that where I live?  A place where we need clean fire hydrants?  Someone is paid to dust off the fire hydrant so that when I walk past it on my way to the gym it, what, shines a little brighter?   It just honestly made me feel truly awful.  I don't know what else to say about it.

PS -  I don't know who is out there still clicking on ads, but Google shipped me my third $100 (American) payment.  Not bad for 750 posts that's like....40 cents a post or something!