Time for Plan B

First of all, to get the logistics out of the way, here's what's gone down since my last post:

26-Sep	20/40 Limit	Bay 101	90
26-Sep	40/80 Limit	Bay 101	-1605
26-Sep	20/40 Limit	Bay 101	-1547
27-Sep	20/40 Limit	Bay 101	472
29-Sep	8/16 Limit	Bay 101	27
29-Sep	20/40 Limit	Bay 101	882
29-Sep	15/30 Limit	Ajs	405
29-Sep	6/12 Limit	Ajs	266
30-Sep	20/40 Limit	Bay 101	2278
1-Oct	8/16 Limit	Bay 101	-40
1-Oct	20/40 Limit	Bay 101	2022

Right before my last entry I had posted back to back losses, so the morning of September 27th found me at the tail end of a 4200 dollar downswing. This was, to say the last, not much fun. However, I just kept trying to "play through it" (much like a baseball player is told to play through a batting slump....not much, however, like the times in college where I encouraged my tired or hung-over friends to "drink through it"), and lo and behold I've won over 5K in the last 3 days.

Here are a couple of hands from today's monster heater (which ended with me cashing out for a 2000 dollar win, but saw a high-water mark of +2800. Having 38 stacks of chips on the table is a pretty fun thing to have happen). In hand 1 I flop a monster hand and am unsure how to proceed on the turn due to the fact that over half the table is still in the pot. In hand 2, I don't know if I should check/raise to trap a couple of bad players in the pot, or donk bet to try to blast them out of it.

I've settled back into a routine the last week or so now, waking up sometime between 8 (ok, 9 really) and 10, working out, relaxing a bit, and then heading down to bay 101 for six to eight hours of play, getting home sometime after traffic clears around 7pm. I really like the schedule, and caught myself thinking yesterday about how hard it would be to go back to having a real job. It's looking more and more like this is going to stick. My win rate at live 20/40 is now a more than adequate $52.43/hour, and I'm showing almost no signs of burning out. I haven't yet suffered a serious down-swing, but I did basically break even for about 4 weeks and got through it just fine.

So today's humorous story involves a 2p2er I play with fairly often. He's a really nice guy who is always laughing and joking at the table, doing his best to project an image that says "I'm just here to gamble a little guys nothing to see here" instead of the true "I'm going to take all your money eventually" mentality that is going on in his head. Anyway....

I open raise Ace-Nine off from just a wee bit too far from the button (perhaps I was in the lowjack, 3 seats before the button). Someone folds, but the cutoff and button both call two cold. As the button is over-cold-calling, my friend says "Uh oh. Time for Plan B!" I realize now that this story doesn't actually seem that funny, but at the time, with the table dynamic that he and I create, it made me almost laugh out loud. Basically he's pointing out that my goal was to play a small pot, with position, against one or both of the blinds. Now I'm playing a bigish pot, out of position, and probably don't have as much of a hand as I'd like to for this unfavorable outcome. Anyway, I proceed to flop top-two pair and value-bet all three streets, getting called down by a naked Ace-Five that never even made a second pair. I say "Plan B is just easier" and we both have a good chuckle. 2 hours later my friend cashes out 5 racks of chips, saying he has to take his daughter to her softball game. After he left a few people asked me about him, things such as "How much was he in for?" and "He's very patient, isn't he". It would appear that they're starting to catch on to him....never mind that I cashed out for 6.5 racks later that day, and today posted another 6 racker. To my knowledge he and I have taken somewhere around $7,000 out of that game in the last 36 hours :)