Some obvious crap

Haven't posted anything for the last couple of days - haven't really had anything to contribute. I'll keep this entry short, since it won't have any insight that you won't have already had yourself or seen elsewhere.

Rake - I finally noticed the "Total Rake" column in Poker Tracker. My total is $407. Four hundred bucks?! When the hell did that happen? I mean, sure, I realize that a quarter here, a dollar there, all adds up, but I hadn't noticed it as it was happening. Considering that my profit for all levels has been about $450 total so far, does that mean that I would have had $850 profit if not for rake? That's crazy talk! Suddenly I see why the rakeback affiliate programs are popular. (I should check how PT figures that value - if that's the amount taken as rake for all the hands I have played, even pots I have not won, then that would shock me less.)

I have been cautiously trying to get a handle on limit play, with only limited success so far. I had a couple of mildly successful sessions on the $1/$2 6-player limit table over the weekend, but still having trouble with the 10 player tables. With all those players, especially on Party/Empire, someone is always playing some crazy hand and draws out to beat me, it feels like. Play seems more reasonable on the 6-player tables: you can actually scare the other players off their draws a reasonable amount of the time. I think part of the reason for that is that there are fewer people to keep track of, so they can actually remember that everytime you've raised and shown the cards you've had good ones. Maybe it's just too hard for them to keep that in their heads with 9 other people at the table instead of 5 others.

I re-read Lee Jones and am now working on Small Stakes Hold'em, which I had started before but put down for some fiction reading when I hit a "too much poker" point. I am pretty sure I can get my 6-player limit holdem rating into the green, but the 10-player games are going to be hard until I can learn how to deal with them. Maybe I should just abandon them and work on the games that have been profitable for me, but I don't like to concede defeat like that.

In local news, the Japan Poker Players Association has started their Japan Series of Poker! From 7/30 to 9/23, they're running a series of tournaments: limit and no limit holdem, some with rebuys, 7-card stud, limit and pot-limit omaha, and others that I have even less of a clue about. I believe winners of each tourney gain points for the series, and the overall winner at the end of the series wins a JSOP silver bracelet. Also there are 30,000 yen (around $300) travel coupons awarded to the best all around player and the main event winner. Not bad!

And yet I did not go to the 6-max NL Holdem with Rebuy game on Saturday, 7/30? 6-Max! That's even, like, my game as far as I can tell! What was my problem? Unfortunately, the girlfriend has not been feeling well and was thinking of going to the doctor to get checked out on Saturday, so I figured I should not duck out to go play poker. She is kind of dubious about this whole poker thing to begin with, particularly going someplace to play live, since most gambling in Japan has overt or covert ties to the yakuza. Last time I had to promise to be careful not to be stabbed and robbed when checking out the JPPA, and not to bring any credit cards or large amounts of cash or anything worth stealing.

Next week is another NL holdem tourney, so I will try to attend that one. Since the Saturday events are supposed to be better attended than the Friday night games, I expect there'll be a couple tables of 10 players each. Ugh. Well, what the hell. I still have my free-entry coupons from last time.