Another Clock Management Rant

Except this time, for a change of pace, I'm going to rail on the announcers. I have NFL Sunday Ticket now (it was free for new direct tv customers this year) and it has completely changed the way Danielle and I watch football. She wasn't around this morning so I watched the 10am Steeler's game by my lonesome, which normally would have been pretty boring and irritating; not so with Sunday Ticket. I was keeping track of 3 or 4 games using my TV, laptop, and iPad, all the while also watching the red zone channel that basically shows everything interesting that ever happens. But none of that is the point. Neither is the fact that the Steelers eviscerated the Titans, playing a man whose nickname is "fat" and who was out of football 6 days ago at LEFT TACKLE for the ENTIRE GAME, a quarterback who was walked with a notable limp on and off the field, and missing 2/3rds of their starting defensive line, a former defensive poy, a pro bowl guard, their starting running back, third down back and like 3 other guys I've probably forgotten to mention. Yes that sure was sweet, but it's not the point. Here's the point....

I switched to watching Raiders Texas because the game was (1) still on, (2) still in question, (3) an afc matchup, and (4) had serious fantasy football implications for my team. The situation was as follows; Oakland had the ball up 5 points with less than 3 minutes to go. They had to snap the ball with about 2:50 on the clock, specifically, to run their 2nd down play. They threw a deep incomplete pass, which stopped the clock, and the announcers immediately railed on them for such a bad decision. In fact, they talked about the fact that Houston wouldn't have gotten the ball back until just inside the 2 minute warning had they not done something so stupid until...Houston got the ball back just inside the 2 minute warning. You see, when you snap the ball at 2:50, if you run it into the pile you're going to have to snap it again...just before the 2 minute warning. But if you throw a deep incomplete pass that takes about just 6-7 seconds, then run the ball into the pile again with the clock reading 2:43, it turns out you can punt the ball....right at the 2 minute warning. Throwing the deep ball didn't cost them anything time wise, and gave them a chance to win the game outright, and the announcers couldn't wrap their heads around it.

So as much as it pains me to say this, well done Raiders. You actually managed the clock correctly there.

Smoted

A lot of ridiculously stupid shit happened to me last night, and I only have like 10 minutes to write about it, so here goes. I went to Hawaiian Gardens around 4:30 and got seated immediately in a pretty good 30 game that pretty quickly transformed to pretty amazing. The main mark was a player I'd seen before who apparently had binked a middling 5 figure score on poker starts and gotten it cashed out like 2 weeks before black friday. She was very friendly and took her (many) beats extremely well, and ended up losing like $4K on the day (or so she said), and had apparently done all the right reading regarding player poker as a pro. She asked me about playing 40/80 and used the world bankroll and variance to describe the game, which caused me to almost laugh out loud. I mean really, this was one of the worst players I have ever seen, and she's explaining to me how she needs a bigger bankroll to make the jump from 30 to 40, AT THE TABLE. From any sort of winning seasoned pro such talk would be completely unacceptable, but from her it was just....well...tilting. Here is this freaking idiot who apparently has been playing as a professional for several months now, convincing herself I suppose that she's just running bad, talking about bankroll requirements at the table. The levels of ignorance involved were simply stunning. She did things like open limp 74o, then donk/3 the T54hhh flop (she did have the 7 of hearts), then check the river when her flush came in. She bet 44 on an A65-J-6 board with a player all in, after a war had broken out on the flop and 4 players saw the river. She just was...awful.

(24 hour pause during which I forget most of the stuff that happened Tuesday night)

I don't really remember where the train fell completely off the track, but I was puttering along within a few bets of even for the better part of 2.5 hours before it did. Perhaps it was when the button got screwed up and I didn't say anything (it was to my advantage and I've got a new policy in place of not speaking up...it makes me feel kind of (ok really) douchey but hey money is money). Perhaps it was when I played A9o (admittedly a tough hand to play well) worse than you could ever imagine, folding the winner on the river in a 12 bet pot (something I seem to do a lot these days). But the coup de grace happened after the aforementioned player answered her phone for the second time and told her kids "mommy will be home very soon", took her big blind, won a huge pot and...racked up. This alone obviously proves she just doesn't get it, and it put me in a spot to take the last lap to both avoid following the fish to the cage (a standard courtesy that should be extended more frequently) and enjoy a small blind on the button orbit. And I of course got blown up, running QQ into KK (fortunately he played awful and I only lost 5 bets total on like a 9 high board) and getting set over setted thanks to having the aforementioned small blind on the button. So I left an orbit later something like 30 bets under water, wondering if anyone else had the license plate.

The rest of this week has just been kind of silly; in my after hours overtime I literally have lost something like $4K in four days (playing no higher than 30), turning what should have been a nice little heater into just a meh week of winning small. If I just played like all those expert live pros who lock up 5 bet wins as early as 1 hour into their sessions, I could have done something special....

September Post Mortem

Did I spell that correctly? Meh, I hope so. September was a straight forward, boring, and profitable month. I managed to grind out 186 hours of play (including all games played, not just limit hold 'em) and posted a $7200 win at the tables, despite losing about $11K on two of the worst days of my career (one one shift, one off), and enjoyed one of the two months of the year when bi-weekly pay check earners get a third check. It really is silly to think about the amount of money I'm trying to win each month vs the amount I have at risk on a given day, especially now that I'm becoming more and more convinced that I personally am not capable of the 1 big bet per hour gold standard. There are just so many things working against me, like not being able to game select for a good portion of my week, being prone to playing tired when I can game select, and in general games just getting tougher and tougher. I dunno, it's just...tough.

I'm hoping to stick to my plan more diligently over the coming weeks, playing mostly if not all 20/40 (or perhaps some 25 or 30 if I make a field trip here and there) to keep those big losing days of my books. This Saturday was a success in that regard, with me logging a 6.5 hour session of Commerce 20/40. The only problem was that I lost 2 racks basically on my way out the door in the final 90 minutes of what was otherwise a pretty good session. I think I even made some pretty egregious errors (a few river calls that were just 39 dollar losers, a couple of preflop plays that ended up going poorly for me, a few call downs where really the guy just has to have it, etc). So October is off to a little bit of a rough start, but that's fine.

I was kind of hoping this post would go somewhere interesting, but it just sort of didn't. Tomorrow I'm back on shift for another week, and I still think my 1800 hour and 100,000 dollar goals are within reach.

Hand of the Day

Actually it's from yesterday but that's not important. Game is commerce 20/40 and the UTG raiser is playing super tight, showing off to his friend how it's right to fold KJo to an UTG raise because "you see she had ace queen...in the long run I'd lose to her 8 out of 10 times." Never mind that I folded KQo the same hand...anyway, he's playing tight and the SB is a drunk Asian lady who spews like it's her job. And so....

UTG raises, SB calls, I call only with AQo. Meh...I should 3 bet but this is more fun.

954ssd

We check he bets we call.

5d

SB donks....immediately I sense she has airball, likely a turned diamond draw. Under no circumstances can she have trips, or top pair or...well, yeah she has air 100%. But what should I do about it? I tank and get a strong, strong tell that UTG does not like his hand. The pot is small and I decide raising is silly; he's gonna golf anyway. So I call, and he tanks and gives a speech about "cannot beat 9, cannot beat 5...I fold"

8c

She bets I snap call and she says "I miss...I miss but 8" and rolls Q8ss. UTG declares "I folded pocket 8s!"

I mean really....

The Great White Hope

First of all, poker has been meh this week. I basically won back everything I lost in that awful awful Saturday on Monday and Tuesday, and have just been slowly bleeding Wednesday and Thursday. The month ends tomorrow, and I'm hoping to post a solid number just so I can have it looking back at me on the screen in my spreadsheet. I'm kind of questioning a lot of my standard plays again recently and well, I dunno, that happens when you break even for a few hundred hours I guess.

But on to more interesting things and the matter of the great white hope.

As many of you know, I play fantasy football, co-managing two teams with my father. He played back in the dark ages, when you only counted touchdowns, started two quarterbacks, made waiver wire claims on a white board in the break room, and somebody had to compile the scores using USA Today on Monday morning. We play in two leagues, one of which is rather competitive and another that is...not. Now before Danielle gets all up in arms about me dissing her league, I will point out that someone started Garrett Hartley last week and simply win the argument. He's a kicker, he hasn't played this year, and some asshole started him in week 3. Q. E. D. This league is mostly for fun and a little bit of pride, but this year has provided also a great deal of humor in the form of the great white hope. You see, this year our little league was once again in jeopardy of (or, from my point of view, joyously close to) dying off, and the commish decided to email even MORE of my old college buddies who don't want to play and some of her co-workers and to make a long story short we rounded up 10 and went on our way. But here's the rub; my friend Dwight said he'd play, but warned us that he'd never played before and might draft a little funny. You see, Dwight is gay, and as it turned out decided to run his draft board based solely on...attractiveness. He's also white and apparently doesn't have a thing for black men, so to make a long story short...well, here's a copy of the draft sheet. It should not take you long to figure out which team is his.

DANGER ZONE!!!

Player Team Pos.

Eli Manning NYG QB

Peyton Hillis CLE RB

Pittsburgh PIT DEF

Wes Welker NE WR

Owen Daniels HOU TE

Eric Decker DEN WR

Jordy Nelson GB WR

Toby Gerhert MIN RB

Danny Woodhead NE RB

Kevin Walter HOU WR

Stephen Gostkowski NE K

Jay Cutler CHI QB

John Kuhn GB RB

Greg Olsen CAR TE

Seriously, that's his team. And if you've been paying attention at all this year you'll notice that he's kicking ass and taking names. He's 2-1 and has scored the second most points in the league, defeating our sad sack line up of has beens and never was'es in week 2 (we started something like Calvin Johnson, Larry Fitz, Antonio Gates, Tony Romo, Jamal Charles and Cedric Benson, opting to bench Fred Jackson whom we drafted in the THIRTEENTH ROUND). So the great white hope lives on, in the form of a gay man from Tennessee who has never played fantasy football but obviously fines Eli Manning more attractive than Tom Brady.