Anyone else have trouble coming up with titles for their blog posts? I usually try to think of something at least halfways clever, but sometimes nothing comes. So “Thursday” it is.
I just got the password for the Poker Blogger World Poker Tour II from Iggy, so I guess I’m officially going to be donating to playing in the tournament this time around. I have no illusions about my chances at making the final table, but I am looking forward to being at the same table as some of the great poker bloggers out there.
Geek that I am, I was just poking around the webstats for my site and I noticed that the hits on this site have rocketed (relatively) over the past week or so. I figured that being mentioned over at Iggy’s site would increase my traffic I bit, but I think I can thank Jeremy at Love and Casino War for a lot the new hits. Since many of the browsers hitting the site show up as Syndirella, I think being included on his great poker blog collection is probably my biggest source of new readers.
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I managed to get some time in at both Empire and Party last night. I played a lot of good poker (and some bad), but a handful of bad river suckouts left me down on the night. Having my connection to the internet drop mid-hand didn’t help much either. But, I’m going to try follow Felicia’s advice and not spend too much time focusing on results from one table or one session. I do have Poker Tracker and a handrolled Excel spreadsheet that I use to track longer term results, but it’s still hard not to get excited about a good night. That being said, I’m not letting bad sessions get me as down as I was, so that’s a step in the right direction.
Only a few hands of note last night. After some frustrating losses, I peeked at my cards and decided that the 72o I saw there was good enough to play. That’s right, I had The Hammer and chose to use it to smite my opponents. Of course, I was really just on tilt and a bit desperate for something to turn my luck around. The flop came A73 and I bet into it, hoping that the A was not out there (did I mention I was tilting?). The turn was another 7 and I just keep right on betting. I’m heads-up going to the river where a blank falls and my opponent folds to my bet. Unfortunately I forgot to uncheck the muck cards box and the other appropriate etiquette for playing The Hammer, but it still brought a smile to my face and helped me shore up my play afterwards.
It also helped that shortly thereafter, my A7h in the big blind turned into the nut flush on the flop (it’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen a made hand on the flop). Unfortunately, there were only two other players still in the hand. But I still slowplayed it, getting the bets and flat calling the flop and turn before check-raising (and capping – I believe he thought I was bluffing with the check-raise and wanted to push me out) the river. The 16BB pot was the biggest I’ve seen in a while. Every time I’ve tried to grow the pot with a good hand recently, a miracle card hits an opponent on the river and it slips through my fingers. Or everyone folds early, which was what I was worried about with this hand. I wish I’d have had a better read on the two players in with me so I could have judged whether they would have kept betting into my raises.
I have some notes on a few other hands I was going to write about, but they make me look pretty stupid, so I think I may just skip them. (sure, my trip tens looked good, but when the almost made straight showed on the river with 6 people in the pot, maybe I should have been more cautious – for the record, I didn’t even see it, but I’m not sure if that makes it better, or worse. And with a K88 flop, who would think that the turn 5 gave someone a boat 5s over 8s.)
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Tonight I have my bi-weekly home PLHE tournament. I’ve changed the buy-in to 20$+2$, so I can pay off the chips and cards I recently bought to upgrade the game. And a buddy that is moving to California just dropped off a homemade poker table that he wants to sell to me before he leaves. It is very well-made, and I’d really like to buy it off him, but it’ll take a while to pay off with the 2$ tournament fee. We’ll see how nice it is to play with tonight.
The last game was my first out of the money, so hopefully I’ll revisit the final table again tonight. And I’m going to try to take some notes if at all possible so I can put together a good trip report, even if the trip is to my own home game.