Month: December 2003

After finding EVERY $5-10 ring game and every $5-10 shorthanded table full, I was forced to find a $3-6 game. Party showed almost 22,000 Players logged on (I’m guessing this includes fake money players, which I think are mostly bots), and even the $3-6 tables were full. I finally sat at a $3-6 table with 3 players, and figured this was the only game I’d get. The players were hyper aggressive, frequently capping on the flop or turn. I figured this would be some easy money…

1 hour later, I was down $200. Fortunately, Party’s hand history emailer does not seem to be working, so I don’t have to see the carnage. I didn’t play well, but I didn’t play poorly either. I lost a couple big pots when my top pair was beaten by someone catching their 2nd pair on the river, and I just wasn’t catching cards. After quickly dropping $100, I switched to a nearly identical 4 player $3-6 table.

These tables were money… 3 of the 4 players frequently going to the river… everything you could ask for. I just wasn’t catching, and making too many bad calls with 2nd pair.

In brighter news, I discovered Felicia Lee’s Yahoo Journal (note: I had to change my link section title to Blog Brothers AND SISTER!), and read some great journal entries. Check out “The Bellagio Experiment” and “The Death of a Poker Player,” some really cool stuff going on. Felicia made me realize how much I missed playing live, as she plays exclusively in the good old B&Ms in Las Vegas. Most of my fellow Bloggers write exclusively about online play, and I missed getting sucked out on by runner-runner flushes at Hollywood Park.

I also heard from Chris Halverson, whose non-poker-only blog offers some interesting thoughts on Stanley Kubrick, blogger syndication, and even NASCAR. I’m not a NASCAR fan, but Chris knows his whiskey as well as Java, so he’s good in my book…

Playing 2 tables is great, and helps us get to the long run faster, but we are missing out on one of the biggest aspects of the game– the eye to eye combat involved in reading people. The rake at HP is deadly, but maybe it’s time I went back to face the fish. Or maybe I’m just steaming after a bad night.

That 1 hour session beat me up pretty good, and I feel like I’m at a loss for words. Hopefully I can sleep it off and come back with a good session tomorrow night. I almost found myself at the $15-30 tables trying to recoup my losses, but was able to resist. I just don’t have the bankroll to play here, but there is always the temptation of trying to recoup losses at higher stakes. I know this is a trait of “problem gamblers,” but it’s also known as the Martingale betting progression, which given an unlimited bankroll, cannot fail. Unfortunately my bankroll is not quite unlimited.

Off topic: the lines on the NFL games are awful this week– I don’t think there is a spread of less than 7. I didn’t see any game I liked, so I ended up putting $5 on every game. So at best I stand to win $65, but at least I’ve got something riding…

I started running in the mornings before work, which hopefully will sharpen up my mind a little bit. Besides the times when I’ve been injured, this is the longest period (3 months) in my life when I haven’t done any cardio. My energy level is definitely down as a result of my inactivity, but since I’m retired, there’s no real motivation to run. But I think working out really keeps my mind on edge, and hopefully that will help me stay focused at the poker table.

Thanks for reading, hopefully everyone else fared better than me tonight… I don’t mind losing the money, I just hate to lose!

No poker tonight, but LondonFroggy’s blog got me thinking about gambling, capitalism, and the poker boom. I figured I’d give a shot at an explanation, since my Google search didn’t seem to produce much. Warning: philosophical and cultural content to follow.

First off, lets look at the numbers. Is gambling really booming?

“In 2002, commercial gaming revenue nationwide rose a modest 3.5 percent to $25.5 billion, according to Analysis Group, a Los Angeles economic consulting firm. During the same period, Indian gaming revenue increased almost 11 percent to $14.1 billion.”

These numbers suggest that while Brick and Mortar casinos are increasing revenue, there is no evidence to suggest a “boom.” But what about online gambling?

“‘In 2000, Internet gambling brought forth an estimated $2.2 billion in
worldwide revenues… [and] could reach $100 billion a year by 2006′ (Hammer, 2001).
Americans wagered the majority of the $2.2 billion (Sinclair, 2001). Recent market
research estimates that consumers spent from $6.5 billion to $8 billion on Internet
gambling in 2002 (M2: Presswire, 2003). This represents significant revenue growth
from just $300 million in 1997 and $651 million in 1998 (NGISC, 1999).”

Aha! These figures fit the “boom” label, suggesting that online gambling is growing at an exponential rate. It’s difficult to collect accurate data on online casino revenue, since most online casinos are not based in America. The numbers here are outdated, and probably underestimate the actual revenue figures.

The internet has brought gambling to our living rooms: riches are only a mouse click away. But if the medium was available 10 years ago, would we have seen the same growth? Or is there something unique about the time, something about 2003 that has increased the number of people who want to gamble?

I believe that if gambling had been convenient in the past (imagine blackjack tables at the local bar), people would have gambled then as they do now. It’s difficult to separate gambling as a social activity from gambling as a “hobby”. The new Strip and the dying of Fremont Street suggests that the real gamblers (the non-social ones) are far outnumbered. But the internet suggests otherwise.

Back to the central question. What is attracting Americans to online gambling (note: these conclusions may hold for other countries, but as an American, I can only speak from an American perspective)? I think the answer lies in an underlying disgust with capitalism.

Robert Nozick, a contemporary philosopher, defines a capitalistic society as one in which “the market distributes to those who satisfy the perceived market-expressed demands of others, and how much it so distributes depends on how much is demanded and how great the alternative supply is.” So members of a capitalistic society receive money based on the demand that exist for the product or service that they supply.

Gambling represents a subversion of capitalism: the gambler receives money not for a product or service, but for either (a) their skill in estimating the expected value of various events, or (b) luck in guessing an event with a negative expectation. Most gamblers clearly fit into category (b), but we can think of poker players, card counters, and roulette sharps who would fit into category (a).

A positive expectation gambler uses his knowledge to create situations where he has an advantage over his opponent(s). Is it a failure of capitalism when a brilliant mind chooses gambling as a profession over another career which large amount of demand exists? I say it is– the system’s inability to capture the potential good or service of the brilliant gambler has caused him to seek a career where he can use his brilliance to gain a higher profit.

The positive expectation player need not deal with organizational charts and bureacracies that may impede his ability to generate useful products. In gambling, the player’s income and reward is based solely on his level of skill and knowledge. This directly proportional relationship between personal performance and income rarely exists in traditional capitalistic careers, where income depends greatly on the performance of co-workers and bureacrats that the employee has little or no influence on.

I argue that the failure of capitalism– the failure of the employee’s ability to control the good that he produces– is responsible for the growth in online gaming. Speaking from a personal perspective, gambling is the only arena in my life in which my performance has a direct and visible effect on my well-being. I think the future will bring more “professional” gamblers, and skill games such as poker will see enormous growth as casinos eliminate skill games such as blackjack. Vegas has already seen a proliferation of 6:5 single deck blackjack, which offers the house a nearly insurmountable 1.5% edge (vs. .5% with traditional blackjack rules).

What does this mean for poker players? The good news is that there will be a constant supply of new players who are trying to develop their skills. These will provide skilled players many opportunities for positive expectation plays. The bad news is that the poker “industry” will be able to support a much larger number of professionals, and the ocean will be filled with a greater number of sharks.

For those unsatisfied with American capitalism, the convenience of online gambling has created an opportunity for knowledgeable and skillful gamblers to make a large amount of income. The “rugged individualism” of old America is returning in the waters of the internet gambling, a place where income is solely dependent on one’s knowledge of the game and the ability to recognize positive expectation gambles. Come on in, the water’s nice!

I welcome comments and disagreements– the thoughts you see here are in their infancy, and represent only my humble opinion.

oooooooooooooofff… the Rams nearly killed me tonight, I had doubled up my bet and given away 5 points to the lowly browns. Thank you Tim Couch and Aeneas Williams! St. Louis won by 6, saving me from a big hit in the sportsbook. Bulger played terribly, and the Rams D won it for them. The Browns played their usual horrible game, and Kelly Holcomb’s interceptions were quite enjoyable.

I think this is the first day I’ve posted twice– I can’t stop blogging!

After a couple short sessions, I ended up winning… $1 whole dollar! But it feels like a win, since I just came off a $174 win in a 36 minute session on the $5-10 short handed tables (Grubby thanks for drawing my attention to these babies). There were a couple maniacs there, and I managed to hit a couple big hands. After dropping $170 at the $3-6 games in a matter of less than in hour, it was nice to finally hit a couple hands on the shorthanded table. I didn’t have my A game at the $3-6ers, I was busy watching the Rams game and trying to stay awake. Bad news.

The idea of going to bed with a loss that big forced me to focus, and I actually played pretty well shorthanded. The tide turned when I took a gamble slowplaying Aces in the BB… here’s what happened:
5 players at the table, first two fold, 3rd player raises. 2nd player calls, and I don’t want to define my hand (using Abdul’s logic). Flop is 7c Kd Tc, sb bets, I raise, and am reraised, called, I cap it, 3 players in. Turn is 6d, and I’m hoping we’ve got AK and not KK, and I’m guessing there’s a flush draw out there. SB bets out, I raise, and 2 callers. Turn is 4d, and I bet out and get two callers: SB shows KQo, caller shows JTc… dodged a bullet! $118 profit.

I managed to make a couple good calls with middle pair, and was getting some good cards… I was playing far tighter than the rest of the table, so was able to take a couple pots with the bluff checkraise or bet-reraise on the flop. With 6 players at the table, it’s easy to tell who’s playing tight and who isn’t, so you can actually use your table image to bluff (unlike at the $3-6 level).

I don’t even want to talk about the horrible play on the $3-6 tables. Maybe I should get away from them… my stats are much much better for $5-10… I’m averaging 2.59 BB/100 hands at $5-10, and only .78 at $3-6! A lot of this is because many of these $3-6 hands were played 3 at a time, and it includes a lot of early sessions back when I was not a very good player. For me, I know that adding a 3rd table probably costs me at least 1 BB per hour per table, probably more than that. Maybe I’ll stick to $5-10.

TJ Cloutier said you’ve gotta gamble at a limit where it hurts to lose– seeing that $20 checkraise in $5-10 makes me FEEL that call, whereas $6 more just don’t hurt as much. I’ve gotta do an analysis to find the breakeven point for 3 tables $3-6 and 2 tables $5-10. The annoying thing is that it takes forever to find a $5-10 game on Party these days. Can they please open up some more tables??? Buy some more servers! I couldn’t even get in a $30 SNG… it’s harder to get in one of those things than to actually win the tourney.

MrsDouble is watching the previews for the next “Average Joe”… this whole reality TV stuff cracks me up. The ideas for the shows sound great– Joe Millionaire and Average Joe have a sort of vicious mockery of society, which attracted me. But then you see the people on the show and they are so boring that it always ends up being anticlimactic.

WOAH! Just saw a preview for next week’s “Las Vegas” on NBC. This is a direct quote from the promo:
(man in macho voice) “Meet poker players that will KILL to win!”

Ye Gads. Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio? Can’t anybody out there write a sitcom or drama with some backbone? Or just WRITE a sitcom period? I guess before I can complain I would have to get cable. Is it possible to be on tilt in blog writing?

I saw somewhere (I forget where) that Phil Hellmuth is optioning the rights to his life story to someone? Can you imagine a sitcom about Hellmuth? I would give up my whole bankroll to see a season of that…

Hellmuth: “Here’s your toast honey… just like you like it.”

Mrs. Hellmuth: (looking at toast)

Hellmuth: “Come on honey… I’m really rooting for you to eat it…”

Mrs. Hellmuth: “Phil I told you I hate white toast.”

Hellmuth: “That’s funny, because I READ YOUR MIND and I know you’re lying. You love white toast.”

Mrs. Hellmuth: (Stands up and waves to neighbor outside)

Hellmuth: “Have some class honey. Eat my toast, don’t do the wave in my face!”

(fade to commercial)

Can you tell I’m a little tired? If you didn’t see the WPT episode where Hellmuth faces off against a magician, you won’t get that dialogue. Not that it’s funny anyway.

May your slowplayed Aces hold up.

There comes a time in a budding poker player’s career when he realizes that starting hand requirements are flexible, and vary widely based on changing table conditions. In my case, I’ve been starting to play a little too loose, relying too much on “feel” and too little on odds.

So I’m going back to the best pre-flop poker strategy available (and it’s free). Abdul Jalib’s definitive guide to preflop play is probably my favorite poker strategy writing I’ve come across. However, it’s taken me about 10 readings to really get a good understanding of it. I’ve read on RGP that Abdul Jalib is the pseudonym for a well-known pro, but no one seemed to have any good guesses as to who.

What follows are the highlights of the document, broken up by section.
**************************************************************************
1. General Concepts
–Domination: “A hand is dominated if it has 3 or fewer outs against another, like AJ against AQ. Second best offsuit hands are what make you money in hold’em – when other players play them.”
–Implied odds: “Small pairs, suited cards, and zero and one gap hands (examples: 22-66, A6s, and JTs and QTs respectively) thrive on “implied odds”, a term coined by David Sklansky, meaning they will frequently be folding after the flop unless they flop big, and so they normally want to see the flop cheaply.”
–Reverse implied odds: “Offsuit hands have “reverse implied odds”, since they cannot usually bet and raise with confidence towards the end of the hand. Normally, an offsuit hand likely to be best should make it expensive to see the flop, in order to harm the hands that would have good implied odds to see the flop cheaply. Big pairs have reverse implied odds as well, but they are much more robust, since they can win unimproved, or by making two pair with a low pair on the board, or by making a set or full house.”

2. Opening
Note that a lot of people use Abdul’s preflop openers table as a starting hand chart. This is a mistake– it applies ONLY when no one ahead of you has bet, as it is an OPENING chart.

TIGHT GAMES
–Blind stealing in tight games: “When opening in tight games in any position or loose games in late position, your attention should be on getting heads up with a blind or outright stealing the blinds.”
–The value of big hands: “Most hands are worth less than the blinds and so for most hands stealing the blinds is a coup; hence, raising is correct for most hands. AA is worth about four times the blinds if it gets some action, so stealing the blinds with it and your other very strong hands is a major disaster. Without other concerns, in a tight game you should raise with marginal hands, and limp (and usually reraise if raised) with your strongest hands.”

LOOSE GAMES
–Always open-raising: “In games where a raise generally gets 1 or 2 callers, but rarely steals the blinds, open-raising with any playable hand is very reasonable and helps avoid leaking information.”

3. Facing Limpers
–General advice: “You should raise an opened pot when you will win the pot more than your fair share of the time or your hand would play better without additional players in the pot. Consider whether calling would lure dominated hands to call after you (or additional hands period to give you odds for your draw), or whether raising would drive out dominating hands after you or allow you to get heads up (or almost so) versus a hand you dominate.”

4. Facing a raiser
–General advice: “The key concept when facing a tight raiser is: “run away and live to fight another hand.” Most players raise with their best hands, limp with their worst hands, and you can exploit this by deftly sidestepping their raises and punishing their weak limps with raises of your own. You need a hand a couple levels higher than the raiser’s minimums to consider playing. Offsuit aces are especially vulnerable to being dominated by a tight raiser. The implied odds of suited zero or one gappers are trashed by raises. Medium pairs can easily be dominated by bigger pairs, and otherwise it’s usually a crapshoot against two overcards. Versus a tight raise, you can only three-bet profitably with AA, KK, and AK. Therefore, to avoid giving away information, flat call with these hands preflop and go for a raise on the flop.”
**************************************************************************

Ok, so how can this help my game? Well, the first thing I recognize is that I haven’t been thinking about domination enough. Depending on the looseness of the table, do we really want to call a raise with AJ offsuit? If the table is very loose, then maybe… but would a typical player raise with AT suited? I need to stop playing KQo for 2 bets, even in late position.

The second thing I realize is that I haven’t been raising enough with my big suiteds, e.g. QJs, KTs. These hands will win more than their share of the pot when it hasn’t been opened, so bring it in for a raise when you open.

Abdul focuses on “balancing” play a lot, so he advocates liberal use of the limp-reraise. With online play I don’t think balancing is as important–it’s very hard to get a good profile on players, because you rarely play with the same set of opponents. I love the limp-reraise for purposes of confusion rather than balancing– it’s great to see the long pause after a limp-reraise.

Ok, so I have to clean up my pre-flop game a little bit, and Abdul’s breakdown of opening hands should help. Your play shouldn’t be dictated by a chart, but knowing the odds of good/marginal preflop hands winning (e.g. QJs) can help you play better. The other thing I need to do is start counting the number of bets in the pot. I have been lazy with this, and it has not yet become automatic, since I often play 3 tables simultaneously. Multiple tables = bad habits!

Exhaling… ok, not sure how that little exploration of theory space went, but if nothing else, it made me realize my game has gotten a bit sloppy. Gotta get back to disciplined play. Yardley’s book (although completely outdated) basically says that the key to winning is to (1) play only hands that are strong favorites, and (2) find a table with at least 4 suckers. I’ve heard many times that table selection is the most important skill in poker, and I definitely don’t spend much time trying to be seated at the most profitable table. I suppose if I was playing as a pro, I would spend the extra 10-20 minutes scoping out the best table, but for now I have to sit wherever they stick me (sometimes I have a choice of $3-6 tables, but not often).

Got an email from LondonFroggy, who is out there blogging for all those UK poker players. I think I’m more of a fan of British poker than American poker, I must confess. Alvarez and Holden were both Brits, and I guess they’ve made me think of the British players as more intellectual than the ramblin gamblin Texans who (supposedly) invented Hold ‘Em. Then again, Devilfish seems like a twit, so who knows. Check out LondonFroggy’s blog at the link on the right.

Ok, I’m going to take a page from Iggy’s blog and start offering y’all a “picture of the day” link. For the first offering, I’m gonna have to “serve up”
an interesting pic of our favorite tennis player doing what she does best

Ok one more, just to show you how much I miss the east coast:
Real fans, who would drive to the Laker game even if it was drizzling

A relatively uneventful day on the tables. Managed to pull in an average of 2.5 BB per hour on the triple 3-6ers, but after 6.28 hours total, it only added up to a $115 win. I’ll take it, but I see what they mean when they say it’s hard to drop down levels. You can sit in the $5-10 shorthanded game and win or lose that much in 15 minutes, and the robotic play just wore me down after a while. But I need to build the bankroll, and the variance is much much smaller at $3-6, so I’ll keep at it for a while. Party seemed unusually tight today. The evening $3-6 games looked more like the normal tight $5-10 games. I guess Party doesn’t loosen up until everyone gets a few drinks in them… but it’s 10 PM east coast time, so I figured it would be prime time. I also killed the coors lights last night, and was too lazy to make it to the store, so I think that decreased my patience tenfold. It’s a lot easier to sit there and click fold with a few beers in your stomach (there’s a point when the raise button becomes attractive though).

Nothing too exciting to report from the day’s play, although I did have the pleasure of sitting at a .5/1 table with the Intrepid Card Player (link to his blog on right). Watch out for this guy, he’s got the patience to be a good one… Anyway, this particular table was just amazing. Amazing! I just looked at the pokertracker stats, and not counting my raises, there were only 3 raises in the entire 23 hands I played! And 2 of those were made by ICP! The players had big flashing calling station signs hanging from their little icon heads. There would be 8 players seeing the flop, and it would get checked down to the river. Someone laughed at me for raising preflop when I didn’t have AA. What is going on here? I was baffled.

It reminded me of a song by one of my favorite groups, The Bottlerockets. It’s called “Thousand Dollar Car” and here are the lines that ran through my head after sitting in this game:

If you only got a thousand dollars
You oughta just buy a good guitar
Learn how to play it’ll take you farther
Than any old thousand dollar car

The point is that by trying to skimp on the bankroll, you end up with junk. This .5/1 table didn’t resemble poker. More like video poker. I encourage everybody playing this limit: once you have some experience under your belt and have read some Lee Jones, to save up $600 (or perhaps $400) and move up to $1-2. I really don’t think too much can be learned at games where there is no raising and very little betting. But maybe I was just at an unusual table. It really made me want to code up a bot and unleash it on the unsuspecting calling stations, but I just don’t know how to do all the screen scraping involved.

I went through Pokertracker to try to find some leaks, to see where my game was weak. There’s a cool feature that lets you sort by BB/Hand. If you sort it in ascending order, you see the hands that have lost you the most BB/Hand. In my case, here’s what I got:

Hand BB lost per hand
88 .78
AKs .68
K8s .54
T7s .52
77 .40
55 .40

Ok, so a couple of statistical “yeah buts” here. The sample size is around 35-45 for each hand, and except for AK, about 1/4 of these hands were received in the blinds. So that kind of screws up the analysis. However, it is clear that I’m pushing my middle pairs too hard… raising with 88 might be ok on the button, but it looks like I’m losing money pushing them from middle position. I will have to cool off with 88 and 77, and play them like the smaller pairs.

The K8s and T7s are mostly from shorthanded games, when trying to steal the blinds. I guess I should slow down with these hands and not gamble as much. I was surprised to see that T7s there, although nearly 50% of those hands I was in the blinds with.

It’s also clear that I’m hanging on to AKs too often. These are the only overcards that I usually call with, so often I’m calling a bet with only 6 outs. For a correct call on the flop, I need to be getting at least 4 to 1, probably more since if an ace hits there is a decent probability the opponent will fold. But I think where I’m losing with this hand is heads up on the 5-10 tables, when I usually (wrongly) feel that AK can win unimproved.

Another check I did was to review the Misc. Stats tab, which breaks down the amount of money by hand rank. I was surprised to see that I had actually lost $141 on Final Hand = One Pair, and won $2200 on Two Pair. This didn’t make sense, but I realized that two pair also includes the times the board pairs. Duh. The only tentative conclusion I could draw from these stats is that I need to be more careful with top pair, as it holds up less often than I thought, according to these figures. They back up the idea that in multiway pots, you need better than top pair to win.

Ok, sorry if that was boring, but I think I learned something. Football was good to me this morning… I missed the under on the Cinci-Baltimore game when Baltimore inexplicably tacked on an extra TD in the fourth quarter. I didn’t see this game, so will have to check the paper tomorrow to see what happened there. But I won my Colts bet, thanks to the wonderful special teams of Tennessee. A fumbled punt and 2 fumbled kickoffs was about the only thing that could keep the Mighty MVP McNair from ruining my bet. You know, the lack of good special teams in the NFL amazes me. In college, my coach always spent equal time practicing offense, defense, and special teams. He always said that special teams was 1/3 of the game. I agree with this, and there is no excuse for some of the horrible plays you see on special teams every week. The Chiefs specials are the best in the league, and they’ve stolen about 4 games as a result of them. I’m going to start finding games with tight spreads, and just bet on the team with the better specials.

Anyway, during the indy game I remembered the snowstorm in New England, and remembered that the Pats were giving 3 points to Miami. The Pats have no running game, and the conditions were not conducive to passing. I figured Ricky Williams would get his 80 yards, and we’d see a game something like 13-6. Now, to take the under or just go with Miami? The Pats are my newly adopted team (unfortunately I am a lifetime Raider fan), me being from New England and all, and Bill Belichek actually graduated from my college, Wesleyan University. Belichek is, hands down, the best football mind the NFL has ever seen. And, like an idiot, I went against my gut and with my bad-weather logic and put the money on the Dolphins. Result: 12-0 Pats, all Belichek. Why didn’t I take the damn under???

Faulk will run all over Cleveland tomorrow and get me my money back, but what a dumb bet. I’m gonna try to ride the Pats all the way through the playoffs…

8 pm Sunday night, maybe I should get back to Party…

Addendum:
Well, I hopped on a $5-10 shorthanded table while I waited for the full $5-10 tables to clear out. With whiskey in hand (there was no beer in the fridge), the following hand unfolded.
I’m too tired to write it out, but here it is:
5/10 TEXASHTGAMETABLE (LIMIT) – SUN DEC 07 23:49:50 EST 2003
Table Mystique (6 max) (Real Money) — Seat 1 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: lketowin ( $193)
Seat 2: Wheels2003 ( $245)
Seat 3: Holdouts ( $148)
Seat 4: hdouble ( $198)
Seat 5: Mistressromy ( $315)
Seat 6: prosound ( $243)
Wheels2003 posts small blind (2)
Holdouts posts big blind (5)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to hdouble [ 4c, Ac ]
hdouble raises (10) to 10
Mistressromy folds.
prosound calls (10)
lketowin folds.
Wheels2003 calls (8)
Holdouts calls (5)
** Dealing Flop ** : [ 8d, 5c, Tc ]
Wheels2003 bets (5)
Holdouts calls (5)
hdouble calls (5)
prosound calls (5)
** Dealing Turn ** : [ Jc ]
Wheels2003 bets (10)
Holdouts raises (20) to 20
hdouble calls (20)
prosound folds.
Wheels2003 raises (20) to 30
Holdouts calls (10)
hdouble raises (20) to 40
Wheels2003 calls (10)
Holdouts calls (10)
** Dealing River ** : [ Js ]
Wheels2003 bets (10)
Holdouts calls (10)
hdouble calls (10)
** Summary **
Main Pot: $208 | Rake: $2
Board: [ 8d 5c Tc Jc Js ]
lketowin balance $193, didn’t bet (folded)
Wheels2003 balance $388, bet $65, collected $208, net +$143 [ 8s 8h ] [ a full house, Eights full of jacks — Jc,Js,8s,8h,8d ]
Holdouts balance $83, lost $65 [ 2c Kc ] [ a flush, king high — Kc,Jc,Tc,5c,2c ]
hdouble balance $133, lost $65 [ 4c Ac ] [ a flush, ace high — Ac,Jc,Tc,5c,4c ]
Mistressromy balance $315, didn’t bet (folded)
prosound balance $228, lost $15 (folded)

There is nothing more I hate than the river full house. 10 to 1 and the guy hits it. Would have been my $143. I fought my way back with a couple hands, and ended up down only $60 for the session… damn river jack.

However, there is a happy ending. I hopped on a couple full $5-10 tables and ironically, won two big pots in a row with… 99! The hand that had lost me the most money apparently was feeling neglected, and through for me. A lucky suckout to hit my trip 9s on the river and a $94 pot. The high board card was a 10, and it turned out the guy had QT. Hey, I deserved this one after getting hit in the head with that boat. The next hand I get 99 again, and call an aggressive player to the showdown, who ends up having 66. $44.

I raked a $72 pot when my KQ on the button flopped 2 pair. Nothin like hittin the flop while the scotch goes to your head. Final figures: up $57 after 1 hour total. It was nice to be a winner again, and the $5-10 tables are definitely my favorite. I better get to bed before I throw my winnings away in a drunken tilt…