What We Have Here...

Is a failure to communicate.  Or at least that's what I think must be causing most of the stuff I'm seeing at the Bike on a day to day basis.  First of all I did play Saturday, and I was justly smoted in the Commerce 60, dusting off 2 racks over the course of 6 hours in just one of the most magical unicorn and pixie dust filled games of the modern poker era.  Nobody any good whatsoever in the game, several world class fish you could build the entire thing around, and I simply couldn't win a pot.  I won't bore you with the details, but I think I lost hands with 70+ percent equity on the river in pots of over 20 bets at least three times, and well it was just sort of silly.  But that was Saturday and I was at Commerce because why would the bike have a game on Saturday, what with like 8 employees on the payroll to support the thing and them giving everyone who walks in the door $15/hour?  No reason.  Playing on Saturday?  Inconceivable!  But that's not really what I want to talk about, how there isn't a game a lot of the time for really no good reason.  No, what I want to talk about is how they've managed to pull that off by walking you through today.

I rolled up way too early, like 9:45am, but I had some things to take care of (I'm trying to get HEM working, check my hours, read my book, blah blah blah) so it was OK if I had to wait but holy cow there is the alpha fish so me the 10am prop (the guy who has exactly my old job) him and this guy whose job is to play poker at the bike (he's not a prop...he's not a host....I don't know what he is, but he is employed by the casino) fire up the game.  The actual host comes in, then we pick up another super live one and bang we're off and running.  I forget the complete lineup when it happens, but it's something like me, two of these "people who work here but do whatever they want", and 6 other customers filling the 9 seats when a guy who should always always always get a seat instantly walks in and...doesn't get a seat.  He's super live.  He's super flighty.  And he wants to play.  And neither of them get up.  Not only don't they get up, one of them lobbies for 10 hands straight, leaving his chips on the table, giving me the impression he's quit but actually is just talking to the prop (who did dutifully give up a seat in an amazing game).  The other one is actually stuck for the first time I can probably ever remember (9 times out of 10 she just dings us for $1000, then gets up to fold for 5 hours straight in the NL game), and the prop actually talks to me about it, asking if it was always like this.  Yup, I tell him, some things never change.  Then, 30 minutes later when the flighty fish has guess fucking what driven to commerce, she locks up a 20/40 seat but, at the suggestion of the other one, LEAVES HER CHIPS on our table so "the guy in the 20 won't come over right away because they need to get that game going".  As an aside, the 20/40 game is now being run "by the corporation" which means the 40/80 props (and there are like 4 or 5 of them) not only don't play it, but actually seemingly go out of their way to sabotage it by starting 30/60 mix games to draw players out of it.  So now they are trying to sneak another 30 something white pro (who won't play 20) into the game ahead of this 20/40 player (who as it turns out is also a 30 something white pro but at the time he could have been anybody) in a spot early (both should be behind the fish guy who's probably lost a rack at Commerce by now) and it's just...ridiculous.  A player quits, the prop gets back in, and then the two live ones bust out on the same hand and I have just had enough and snap spite quit.  If they want to fuck things up that badly, I'm sure as shit not going to try and fight them.

Are You A Wizard?

Tight by local standards reg opens, whale calls, Villain calls SB, I call BB four ways.

J62dd

Check check opener bets whale folds villain peels not closing the action with me behind. I fold.

Tr

Check check.

Kr

Villain bets opener calls villain shows Kc4d to win. Next....

Whale limps EP villain raises HJ CO calls button 3 bets BB calls whale calls villain caps five ways.

AK5r

Two checks villain bets co folds button raises two folds villain three bets button calls.

Jc

Villain bets button calls

9c

Same action. Villain shows 86cc for the win. The game we are playing is 60/120 and villain is, by all other accounts, a winning young white professional. I mean, you have to be fucking kidding me, right? This guy won online? This guy is in the Medium Bob and 8-mile plan of support a family from the east coast by playing here? Really? Even if you could convince me that his plays are correct (and you can't you just can't) doing that shit would have to lead to 1000 big bet swings, right? Yet there he sits, check raising 3rd pair 4 ways and Donking 43 from the SB into a 6 way raised pot on Q42 and winning while I lose 60 bets running into his kings every single fucking hand.

Somehow Winning

I have this little google docs (I guess google drive now) sheet where I periodically do an inventory of my net worth.  I'm not really sure why I started doing it other than I wanted to get some satisfaction out of watching it go up.  I fired it up today and did some rudimentary math and lo and behold it's actually higher than it's ever been, despite my not making any money for several months straight now.  So right there it bang it was worth it to keep the sheet, because now I feel good about myself, even though all the gains were derived from passive investments (the market has gone nowhere but up since like July) and a horse running like the very wind itself once more.  I'm really glad I held onto that guy....I've gotten a fair bit of advice along the way from a wide array of people (some I respect...some I don't really...some who know what they're talking about...some who don't) saying that I should have cut the whole thing off.  The advice got loudest during a particularly rough patch, but heeding it would have just been plain silly.  There were growing pains, which were completely foreseeable, and now that we're on the other side of them I've earned the right to keep making money.  So that's just what I'm going to do :)

Today's session at the bike got cut short because, as is the local custom, the game basically broke at 2:30pm.  When I walked in 2 pros and the host were playing 3 handed...I joined them, and we eventually added a regular and another host to bring the game up to 6 max.  We eventually filled to 9 handed, but only briefly, and spent most of the day playing 7 way or so.  The whale came in, dropped his 2 racks, and quit all within what felt like about 15 minutes.  Some other people got buried, I managed to win, blah blah blah.  Here are some fun hands, pretty much all vs the same player....this guy is an old school pro who used to win a bunch but I think has adjusted...poorly...to the new state of limit hold 'em.

Hand 1

I open the button and he 3-bets his own big blind.  Right off the bat this is pretty much bad news vs me.  I mean, I have a super wide range (obviously) so three betting a balanced and superior one is probably fine, but he almost certainly doesn't do that.  And there really is no need whatsoever, since HUHU vs him I'm still betting every single flop (since he has that 3 betting range, his calling range is just retardedly weak and even my piece of shit range almost always is ahead on most boards).  He does 3 bet a lot of hands here, though, as you'll see.  The board comes down something like:

K73r-3-5

And he just barrels off.  Fires every street, then declares dejectedly "ace high" on the river.  As I turn over the mighty 97o and he makes some comment about how lucky I am and I just smile and drag the chips.  If you saw this hand played out online you'd probably think "oh yeah jesse missed some value there" but that's not really the case here.  He doesn't know what he's doing...he's not value betting and trying to get called down by queen high.  He's just...betting.  And so I'm just going to go ahead and let him do that, hopefully for many weeks to come.

Hand 2

The exact same thing happens, except he has KJ and I start with a pair of 4s and the board runs out QT3-7-8.  He bets every street after 3 betting his big blind, I call every street and produce the winner.  He again is frustrated...this one makes a little more sense, as he probably has the nut low of his range by the river and therefore should just be barreling off relentlessly, but still...you see the pattern.

Hand 3

Here's the magnum opus for the day.  I raise some limpers with queens and we see a flop 5 ways.  He's in the blinds somewhere, I'm not sure which one, doesn't matter really except if he's the small well that's even worse.  The flop comes

Q94sss

And only he calls my bet.  I'm loving life, right up until the turn comes:

Q94sss-8r

And he check/raises me.  Obviously I'm never folding top set, but he's pretty much supposed to have exactly jack ten here and me boned right smartly.  I call down on the river 7 and he shows me...K4 of diamonds.  King.  Four.  Diamonds.  The table just erupts in laughter as I let his hand fester in the middle of the table for a minute, trying to see if I somehow grossly misread the board and his hand is more than the bottom pair (nice kicker though) it appears to be before I table my rock (nothing beats rock).

So yeah, things went pretty much OK except for the whole only playing for four hours...the word on the street is that a big game is going to break out at commerce tomorrow, and it's going to take everything in me not to show up at 9am with bells on trying to take the beating of a life time.....but maybe just maybe I can do it.

Fool Me Once....

For the second time in a row I failed today to secure a seat in the "whale" 1/2 game.  I had advanced scouting;  at 7pm last night I was aware that he was coming in at around 9am (which means between 8:50 and 10).  So I woke up at 6:30 in the morning (yes, SIX THIRTY), took care of the dogs (because Danielle is on an overnight work trip where they will kayak and ride dune buggies...fucking dune buggies!) and left for the casino at 7:10.  I arrived at 8:30.  I am not kidding, 8:30.  And when I got there there was a 1/2 HT game going, one which I believe I would have been happy to play in, my rudimentary deuce skills non-withstanding.  There were white pros, asian pros, and at least 3 players I marked as marks, and so I listed for the game.  But what happened?  As soon as the players saw myself and one other young pro they converted the game to straight hold 'em, since it was obvious the whale was coming.  And guess what...a fish quit.  And I got a seat.  So I took it....heck, the game was still pretty good.  Except there was a problem.  As soon as I filled the empty seat (which by the way cleared a 20 name board) a board developed, and it was obvious there were 5 or 6 people waiting around for the whale to come in.  There plan was to start a must move with him, and the thing was he'd be close to last to move...so what did I do?  I quit, right at 9.  I took my shot....and I missed.  They all rolled, even some who should have been clueless, and again there was no board.  If that state continued the minute the whale walked in he'd just sit in the main game and we'd all lose....so I sat again, since after all the game was pretty good and SOMEBODY had to fill the seat.  But there was a problem...the fishes wanted to play triple draw, and since that game was gone they were all not long for the world.   So as the whale walked in and the must move formed, they were all quitting my game.  First one, then two, then the final (there were actually four to start) and all of a sudden I was in the worst LHE game I have seen since the 2p2 meetup where Pete received a hand drawn "missed straddle" button from the dealer.  So I waited for someone else to quit so I wasn't fucking Medium Bob (I really like that guy...I hope he doesn't think I'm a gigantic douche), then snap quit and drove...to the bike.

I learned a few things, finally, from this experience.  My problem is that I've been trying to walk both lines, as it were, attempting to angle the system with class and dignity.  And the thing is you just can't do that.  You can't try to squirm your way into the good game AND pretend like you're following all the rules and doing nothing wrong.  You either have to sink as low as possible, OR you have to stand on your principles and just sit in the main game.  Otherwise you'll look like a douche AND get shut out, which is exactly what I've done the last two times I've tried to navigate this cluster fuck.  So I'm done with it....I'm not messing around with any of that mess any more.  It's just not worth the effort and stress and 80 minute mid traffic commutes and $10K losses...it's not worth any of it, especially when the games, honestly, aren't even that good.  They are filled with REAL professionals, people who kicked ass and took names online, people who are decidedly better at limit hold 'em than I am, and a small smattering of fish.  And at this level even the fish have teeth, they really do.  Sure some of them are "whales" or whatever, but honestly I play with guys worse than even the worst of them day in and day out in the 40 and 60 games.  And that's the thing...those games aren't THAT much smaller than 1/2.  If we were talking about playing white chip, 2/4 or even 3/6, where a "small" win rate of .4 bets per hour would map out to $400k/year, that'd be different.  But we're not...we're just talking about 1/2, and we're usually talking about sitting in a game with 4 experts, 2 tagfish, 1 whale, and 1 beta fish.  On top of that even getting into that state is a stone cold nightmare....I have failed to even achieve it twice in a row because I just don't have the stomach for the level of douchebaggery that is truly required.

So I'm done with all that shit, unless a bird nest just falls into my lap.  I'm going to play 40 and 60 for a while, the way I did the rest of the year and just absolutely killed it.  This career isn't about seeing whose cock is the longest;  it's about winning money and playing a game for a living.  Since the multiple 1/2 games have been wrecking the 60 at Commerce, this probably means I'm going back to the Bike for a while...I already have 13 hours for the month, which means I basically have to finish the 40 out as I'm effectively getting like $23/hour the rest of the way.  And you know what...I LIKE playing there.  I LIKE that there is only one game and that EVERYONE knows my name and that the game is good and that I don't have to have my head on a swivel or basically ever call for chips.  I actually enjoy playing there...nobody throws his cards at the dealer, nobody calls me a piece of shit (happened yesterday at commerce) and there is no reason whatsoever I can't make $10k/month playing there day in and day out.  On top of that I can sleep in, work out, miss traffic, and generally maybe, just maybe, go back to feeling like a human being with some shred of dignity.  So that's the plan...wish me luck.  I'll still consider the Commerce 60 as an option, but I'm not working my days around a white whale.

Next Up....

The Mad-Libs are fantastic, but they drive home a point that I do know but tend to dodge/ignore way more than I should. I am spending way too much of my life angry and upset, which is a large part of the reason I mash unit-ed myself at the Bike today. Over here its a small environment, people can't hide in the crowd and act like world class scum bags without consequence. Over here the level of decorum...well...there simply is one here. Over here I just sit and play 40; I don't have my head on swivel looking for a better game than a half (or full) dozen pros are gonna fight me for. Over here the game starts at 10:15...showing up at 9:45 instead of 9:15 doesn't cost me 5 hours of prime game time. Over here in the land of the blind I am a one eyed king. And for today that suits me just fine.

Some Random Small Posts Will Ensue

I'm playing right now but will make some small single thought posts from my phone. First of all I am alive; but barely. I really got knocked on my ass yesterday at Commerce, missing the whale twice in the 1/2 (we started, game filled, I quit and re-listed, he came in I was first to move and quit the main and never got back) and general high limit propping for them for free, all the while losing $5k mostly in the 40. I just felt...defeated. I felt like there were lots of players doing lots of things (playing being one of them) better than me and I just tucked my tail between my legs and ran to the Bike today. As they say, it is what it is.

The Traveler

I think I've mentioned my friend The Traveler on here before. He just got married, and has embarked on a three month honeymoon around the world with his wife. They are blogging about the trip here:

http://backpacksinfirst.blogspot.com

If you're interested, have a look.

Recommended Daily Allowance...Exceeded

 So we just finished off wedding season (for the year, not our lives...the wedding season of our liveswill continue for several years, more if Danielle continues to make friends that are younger than her) with a 5 day trip to Boston (and New Hampshire) for another college friend's official not tying shindig. The day trip to see Danielle's aunt and uncle (even though she emailed them the wrong date so they weren't able to take off from work) in Bath, NH?  Great.  The wedding itself, including everything from the rehearsal through the after party?  Wonderful.  I will comment that there is only so much time one can spend, comfortable, watching all of one's old drinking buddies drink while not drinking one's self before one starts to get rather annoyed, but that is neither here nor there.  The travel days to get there and back?  Meh, not so great but watchagonnadoyouknow?  Since arriving back here, however, I have been once again set afrenzy by the various amazing and idiotic pieces of my life, and without having any better way to do it, I'll work backwards from just now through the 20 hours I just played (out of 30) and try not to forget anything.  Curiously I feel absolutely fine physically, even though the rage in my brain is threatening to literally manifest into physical form, split through my skull, and go on a murderous rampage. 

First thing's first....That picture actually happened, just tonight.  I was driving home from the bike (more on those assholes later) and everything looked fine and dandy.  As you can see, it was 7:44pm.  That's usually pretty much fine, but I checked anyway and sure enough all four legs of the 710/105/605/91 rectangle were cleared for takeoff.  But then...well, you can see what happened.  I was just about ready to shit myself, honestly.  Why was I even at the bike, you ask?  Well, I had to cash out my points from last month.  You get until the 15th of the month, and I haven't been there yet and at this point I don't think I'll be going there at all, so after my 60 whale quit I decided to head over and just get 'er done.  So I show up and the game but boy is it shitty (all four winning professional props, three customers) and am told....I can't cash out.  You see, the system apparently went down and it's not showing me having ANY points from last month.  They owe me something like $900, and I just know they're going to try to fuck me out of them.  Like, I just know it.  Not only that, but the dude kept me there for almost 20 minutes before he could even confirm they'd extend the deadline for me (you better believe you're extending it you asshole).  So now I have to go back there at some point and just JFC what kind of second rate ass clown show are you guys running over there?  I mean really.

OK so before that what did we have....there was the constant losing.  Yeah, I could deal without that honestly.  People "free carding" me (where by "free card" I mean "three betting in position only to get four bet by me holding top pair no kicker") with gut shots and hitting them 104% of the time.  Kim just snapping off my aces like it's her job (and in fairness it sort of is I guess).  It's just getting so old, I can't get any traction.  The last two days I think I'm up like $900 (curiously the same amount the bike is in the process of stealing from me), but every day there is that two or three hour stretch where 40 bets just get blasted into orbit and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.  I actually was at commerce for over 12 hours today, showing up at 6:40am (couldn't beat traffic) after sleeping for six hours (I still feel great...I'm quitting coffee for the 3rd time and so far it's been amazing) while the 1/2 whale played through the night.  You see, I couldn't get in yesterday because it was my turn to get the dogs after we returned from the wedding, but I had to go call the way to Danielle's dad's house instead of...you know, none of that matters.  I knew the whale was coming but I couldn't get there until 12:30 (he arrived at 12:45) so I was shut out for six hours.  Seems reasonable.  At 10:30 I decided to quit and come back early, which worked out swimmingly as the game had two seats when I arrived in the morning.  But that's a big mucketty muck in and of itself, as I've gotten into the nasty habit of loaning this guy money, which is just idiotic because well it just is.  I don't get enough out of it and I just shouldn't do it.  He always gets himself just mercilessly buried, so it always goes deeper than you want it to and it always takes him longer to pay you back than you want it to because he's just so under it and owes so many people so much and Commerce won't deposit cashier's checks for me anymore because the first time I did this they figured out he was involved and apparently they won't cash any of his checks and well it's just a world class CF.  I'm stopping all that nonsense, which should be a pretty big load off my mind, but the next time I'm in a game with him and he's busto and asks me to borrow (or literally just reaches into my stack) it's going to pretty tough to say no.  But that's exactly what I'm going to do.  It's gonna be...well...hilarious.

There are more things that have pissed me off.  There was the woman (the same one who once basically stole $2000 from me, then didn't return my calls for two weeks, whom I had to chase to the parking lot to try and get paid) screeching "Mother BEEEEEE!" again and again at the table.  That really set me off;  normally I could just take that insanity in stride, swallow it up and hide it way way down in the ever darkening inner-most reaches of my soul, but after a mere three refrains I had to snap "We understand" sarcastically back at her.  Maybe it was because she'd tried to look at my cards mid-hand a few minutes earlier.  Maybe it's because she's a horrible and awful person.  Maybe it was the attempted theft.  I dunno....  She said it two more times...that was a nice touch.  There was the free way ramp closure at 12:15am as we were trying to get home from LAX.  Seriously.  Do not pass go, do not collect $200, do not get home, fuck you.  I think that's actually what the sign said, or maybe I was hallucinating since I'd been awake for 19 hours straight running on 5.5 hours of sleep.  Either way, bumbling around surface streets in Garden Grove or wherever we were was just exactly the way I wanted to end that travel day, for sure.  There was Peyton Manning and his god damned talented self looking all smug and shit as he pummeled my Steelers.  I could rail on that game alone for a few paragraphs, but will leave it at "are you serious, these are the refs?  40 seconds on the clock with a timeout first and goal and you...spike it?  Seriously?  33 seconds to run one the "pick six" play at the end of the game?  Wow."  I mean, they got out played, pretty badly.  With Ryan Clark and Harrison maybe they had a shot, but without two pro bowl defensive starters Peyton is just going to shred you and guess what that's what happened.  There was losing my fantasy game 104 to 102.  Seriously, that was the score.  104 to 102.  Even as I was driving home tonight listening to the radio I became upset at the sheer absurdity of something.  The Whistle Song was playing and they were editing out every single curse word.  Not just the seven words you can't say on TV....all of them.  Hell?  Blanked out.  Damn?  Blanked out.  Now I'm all for trying to clean up the airwaves a little bit and maybe try and preserve the minds of our children for a few extra months, but the entire song is about blow jobs.  Is it really important that kids hear "pull a ---- hamstring tryin' put it on ya" when the man is literally wrapping about getting his dick sucked for the entire tree fiddy?  I mean, seriously people.  No wonder everybody hates Americans;  sometimes we are just a gigantic mob of morons.  

Rage

Oh the rage.  The rage can no longer be contained.  The last 3 times I have played poker just horrible horrible things have happened to me.  So many of them were my fault, though, and that's what makes it all the worse.  The first session was a 21 hour 1/2 bender which involved me failing to relinquish an amazing seat in a pretty good game, long after the chance I was playing well had completely zero'ed out.  And of course I was winning a good bit, like 2+ racks, then through the wee hours of the very early morning took a 6 rack downer before the whale finally gave back the full $20k he had managed to take control of from his case $2000 that somebody showed him out to get out of the fucking credit card machine at like 8pm jesus fucking christ why couldn't we all have just gone home.  I really, really don't want to do that any more.  I'm  not very good at poker as it is, really, and I'm definitely not good enough to just give up all my advantages (good rest, good mental game, game selection, quitting time selection, etc) to play through the night with one whale and 6 pros (who were admittedly all also off their best games) and pretend like I have this huge win rate or something.  Like, was I a winner in that game?  Sure.  Was I a much bigger winner than I'd have been in the 60 the following day had I just gone the fuck home and come back fresh?  No.  Forget "much", even a bigger winner at all?  Probably not.  Then the last two days I've played I just failed to make super obvious quits at super obvious times (up $5000, game just got shitty...quit...or at least drop down...just go up for the day, planning to leave in 45 minutes anyway, just go home!) and got super obviously punished (JJ vs 85s and 85s on 442?  I cannot win that hand obviously....TT vs 85s on 532?  I cannot win that hand.  643ccd I make a king high diamond flush and do not win.  AA v 44 on AQ3?  No good)  then wanted to destroy something beautiful because of it.  Also I spent 75 minutes driving to the casino today (SEVENTY FIVE) and it's currently above 80 degrees in my office because...jesus fucking christ there is no good reason for that other than I have lost the will to fight constantly with Danielle about keeping the house at a reasonable temperature so I'll just be miserable and that will be that.

Really I'm as close to flying off the handle as I've been in a while and just need to take a break.  Will the ants take over the house?  Can we hit 85 degrees in the living room?  Will Lundy win $15k, or just $10k?  Does she think she's the smartest person on Earth, or just the second smartest?  These are the questions that dominate my day.  I just checked my stats, and I have broken even for the last 400 hours, which is weird since everyone on Earth just assumes I've been absolutely killing it non-stop all the days of all the weeks this year.  I can assure you I've been killing nothing, which is probably for the best since it would't be pretty if I just went off like a bottle rocket, which is apparently what the fish who got me barred from the bike did last week, standing up and declaring "fuck you all" to the entire table (then saying he was going to shoot me...remember I wasn't even there) and not getting so much as a 20 minute time out.  Honestly...jesus, whatever, I give up I can't even rage properly.