Friday, December 09, 2005

nano Tonight -- maybe...

I went out to the Thursday night live game at the JPPA last night, for two reasons.

  • Get a little more live poker practice before I show up in Vegas in a bit over a week.
  • Pick up my iPod nano, won from my Everest Cup victory weeks ago.

    I showed up around 5:45pm, with the game scheduled to start at 6:00. Doyle and one other player (I think he goes by Dr_K2? Note to self - maybe I need a better handle for my play at JPPA. Then again, maybe I'm too late to change it.)

    The first words out of Doyle-san's mouth were, "So, did your iPod arrive?"

    Me: "... Isn't it here?"

    Doyle: "... No, we shipped it to your address a few days ago!"

    Sure enough, when I got home I found a notice in my mailbox that the delivery service had come by at 10am to try to deliver it, but naturally, no one was home. If I hadn't been in such a degenerate gambler's rush to get to my PC and play some quick poker over lunchtime, I would have checked my mailbox and seen the notice, and rescheduled the delivery for that evening. I.e. I would have had my damn nano here today!

    Irony. Let me just sit and consider the concept a moment.

    Anyhow, I scheduled the redelivery for tonight, so I should get it when I get home and can play with it over the weekend. It may come in handy for my trip to the States, too.

    My bad luck continued during the Live Game play last night. This month is limit holdem month for the live games, I found, which was perfect considering that's the game I'm trying to work on now. But I played for 3 hours and got shit-all for cards, bleeding away three racks of chips before calling it a night. I got AA very early on, when there were still just three of us playing, and it bumped my stack up, but after that the only playable hand I got was pocket 5s. Called, the flop missed me, and I folded to K2's bet. Late in the game, I called into a family pot (we'd grown to 10 players by that point as more folks drifted in after work) with J2s. The flop was a rainbow 10-K-Q, and K2 bet at it again and everyone called (about 7 players) including me. Ace of the fourth suit fell, so I made my straight. I got into a betting war with two other players, capping it on the turn. Of course I figured them for the other Jacks, but I was willing to split it and if they didn't have it, I was going to make them pay. Another 10 fell on the river - bet, raise, I called, Taipa-san called. I showed my Jack, Taipa-showed his Jack, and the last player showed his K-10 for the full house. Boom. I flushed my few remaining chips on the next hand and bailed to go home and grumble about my lack of iPod nano.

    The game didn't bother me - it was a good reminder of several things. Live games are slower than the online games, so a streak of bad hands will last longer. If I'm going to play tight, I have to take into account that it's going to be slower going and discipline to stay tight and not start playing crap hands after 2 hours of nothing better than 55 will be important.

    Also, sometimes bad luck just happens. I can't expect to have winning sessions all the time. If I have a bad session in Vegas, I'm going to have deal with it, leave the table, go do something else and HAVE FUN. I will not let a bad game ruin my vacation. My JPPA game was a cheap reminder of this - I'm glad it happened.

    Only a week until my Vegas trip! Sucks that I will miss the bloggers descending on Sin City this weekend, but I guess that's just how it goes. It sounds like Dr. Pauly might be in town next weekend, after the Bellagio tourney's finish up. I'll be keeping my eyes open for him!
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