Good + Bad =/= Indifference

Ahh, got a few tournies in tonight, and ended up with a fairly reasonable night.

Made one final table (in Limit Omaha 8, 'natch), though I went out fifth when I got my chips in on the turn, whiffing my draw on the river.

I was actually in pretty good shape at the start of the final table:



Entered the final table in 3rd, but was pretty much alternately whiffing, and card dead, for most of it. No complaints there.

However, I do think I've got Jestocost beat for teh sick of teh night. Yes, all the chips went in on the flop:



And, oh yeah, before I forget, nezzi77 on PokerStars can felch the runny turds out of my ass, 3-bet overshoving 74o preflop on me a few players from the bubble (catches the 4, of course), to knock me out about 15 players from the money. Of course, I'd been playing tight, never showing down junk, and had raised the hand UTG...and I had a stack that wasn't really close to being in the danger zone, so there was no reason to think I'd suddenly expanded my range. 74o, really?

Naturally, even after that donktastic douchebag move of his, he must have tried the same stunt again, because he managed to crash and burn his entire stack and go out only four spots closer to the bubble than I.

Jeebus fucking crisps, if you're going to play like a douchenozzle, and manage to get just lucky enough to actually pick up the pot, the least you can do is learn something from the hand and not piss it all away two hands later.

And yes, I even looked your ass up on OPR, and yes, you've actually hit five four-figure cashes over the last year. All I can say is, it must be fucking nice to have the easy button when you play as badly as you did tonight. Ahh, I can be more compassionate than that...maybe you're just a tilt monkey, given your single $12 cash amongst nearly 30 tournaments covering over $200 in buyins since yesterday....

Some Doors That Open Are Double Doors

Let's get the poker out of the way first...because it's less painful that way. Jeez, my last couple of marathon tourney sessions have completely sucked. Hard.

And, with all due respect to blogger buddy Jestocost, there's been some horrific beats in the process, such as AA < 32o, when the 32o called my 4-bet AIPF. I'm not kidding. Or when KK lost to to two different players holding JJ, when one four-flushed. Gross. Also a bit of spewtardy play after beats. So ugh.

Like when I knocked myself out of a $10+1 HORSE MTT on the exact bubble, when I tried to bluff my way through a Stud hand against the bring-in. 32 paid, I was 16th going into the hand, and I was last to act with an A showing. Why I didn't check/fold by the 5th card, I'll never know....

Okay, that's outta the way. At least until I get hosed again another 15-20 times in my next session, whenever that is.

But yeah, about those damn doors...

Well, just last week, I finally started making music with a new project that is still taking shape. The idea is something along the lines of psychedelic space rock, or what some hear as stoner rock, or in between. Think bands like Dead Meadow, Spacemen 3, parhaps a bit of The Black Angels, if you're familiar with any of those, but leaning much more towards the former.

Yeah, I'm feeling really good about this, though it's early, and we're still composing, woodshedding...hell, we haven't even decided on a name yet.

It seems promising, but perhaps potentially destined to be short-lived, as the singer/guitarist and drummer both have other bands. In fact, the singer is also the bass player in the drummer's other band, in addition to fronting his own other band. To them, this may ultimately just be intended as a side project for a few months, especially as one of them is putting the final touches on an album to be shopped to indie management, booking, and labels (his last band charted on CMJ, and has gotten some of the requisite indierockier love).

Still, I've been friends and big fans of both for a long time, and our bands have played many shows together over the years...I'm planning on riding this one as long and hard as I can, but yet the double door opens...

I was just asked to join another band that I've played many bills with over the years, going back as far as early 2006. An existing band I like a lot (have at least five of their records), and can pick up the material pretty quickly.

Being spoilt for choice can suck at times. I've been out of my previous band for three months, and was quite bummed I had no one to play with, and now, I'm getting more than I can possibly do. I don't have the space in my life to play with two actively gigging or recording bands right now. Or at least I don't feel like I do. It was different when the Good Doctor Mondo was in grad school and we had mostly weekends together. But that was a long time ago.

Ah, what to do, what to do.

Raise Your Hand, It's MeMeMeMe

Um, meme time.

Obviously, this is in no way accurate, but I must say I like the results (taken from my last three pathetic blog entries):

I write like
James Joyce

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I write like
Ernest Hemingway

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

What, no patient of Dr. Gonzo? Well hell, since I can't have grapefruit these days anyway, what am I gonna do with all these syringes?

The silly irony is that all three of these posts were about my recent Omaha run. Which is now most definitively over. At least the run hot part of it. No doubt I'll continue to ride that horse way too long and lose my ass. Yeah. Ass.

Good luck on the felt, ya'll.

Keep Hittin' It, Not Quittin' It (PLO8 Edition)

The horse, she will not be broken. Well, maybe a bit dinged, but sweet that sweet little PLO pony, well, geez. I have to continue to stay away from NLHE, I guess. Played three events on Thursday...well, one was NLHE, but it's the $3.30 triple shootout I love so much (lost HU in the first round for the third straight time).



Two Omaha events. One cash. Not a mincash, but soooo close. This was the Stars $4.44 4-max PLO8 event, so going out 12th wasn't exactly quite bubbling the final table. Now, had my hand been able to improve (or even hold) on the river, who knows? But given my relative chip position once we got to 24 players or so, I really can't complain, and won't. Just continue to ride that pony, is all.

Today?

Lotsa fun for the Good Doctor Mondo and I at the Colorado Irish Festival. Of course, I don't have a lick of Celtic in me, and she's got a lot more Scot than Irish in her (we'll avoid the jokes about when she's got a little German in her...). But I loves me some Celtic music, Gaelic football, and yeah, even pipe bands. Should be tons of fun.

Part of me will still wish we were at Coors Field tonight. After all, not only have the Rockies won five in a row for the first time this year (to climb into the wild card lead and within two games of the division), all but one of those games has involved wild comebacks from several runs down, dramatic home runs, and three were walkoffs. Naturally, the only game I've been able to attend of this run was a rather pedestrian 4-2 victory over the Cards. But thank you Saint Ubaldo, just the same.

Good luck on the felt, ya'll.

Avoiding NLHE, Part Deux....

...and the Fangraph from Heaven (below).

Last night, the Good Doctor Mondo and I were watching the Rockies fall to the Cardinals 9-3 in the bottom of the 8th inning (more on that later), when I cruised the 2+2 forums and found the magic words "Turbo Night". Wahoooo!!!

What is Turbo Night? Well, it's nothing official, but it represents a night where PokerStars (and probably FTP as well, for all I know) is getting ready to reset all their servers. In order to get things wound up, they replace a lot of their tourneys for a number of hours with turbo versions of the same (and replace turbos with super turbos). FAST FAST FAST action yeah.

Anyway, I'm hardly about to start increasing my overall volume, but as the beloved Rockies were on their way down (more on that later), I thought what the hell, sure, I'll jump into this $8.80 PLO8 tourney. Heck, it'll be over in like 90 minutes, right? At 1500 starting chips and five minute levels? Sure!

Well, I still don't know whether it's simply continued run hot, or choosing better spots than my opponents, or simply better play (considering I pulled off at least two successful semi-bluffs), but my streak of relative Omaha success continued, with a 3rd place finish in a field of 112:



No complaints there whatsoever. I came into the final table 7th in chips, and really didn't think I'd make it past 6th with my stack. Once we got down to 3-handed, things were desperate, with 4 big blinds and an M of 2, and I had no room to maneuver, needing a big hand and no time to wait for one:



I did manage to get as high as about 26k, but back down to 18k and with a halfway decent but hardly dominant combo draw (I believe it was something like ATT5 double suited), I potted preflop and lost out to MIXX. But as I suspected, my 3rd place exist was a mere 90 minutes after the tourney started, so I'll take that super-small-sample-size hourly rate, thanks to Turbo Night. And, I'll take my current ROI in Omaha-flavored tourneys, which I'm thinking must be around 280% over the last couple of weeks.

Yeah, now that's sustainable.

Of course, my deep tourney run did cause me to miss certain moments of only THE GREATEST 9TH INNING COMEBACK IN COLORADO ROCKIES HISTORY. As those who follow baseball probably know, we put up a 9-spot in the bottom of the 9th last night against the colossally overmanaging Tony LaRussa. This on a night when former Rockie Matt Holliday punished us with a three run bomb.

I saw the clock and knew it was time for Mr. Late Night (Seth Smith, whose nickname was well earned during many notable PH appearances over 2009 season). And he did not disappoint.

Really, better than all the highlights, all the ESPN-hyperventilation....oh, scratch that part, ESPN would run a LeBron James ass-picking story over a massive humongous 9th inning comeback even during Baseball Tonight....is this, the Fangraphs WPA graph of last night's game. Unbelievable:



Anyway, I probably won't play much (or at all) until this weekend, but yeah, I'mma gonna stick with this Omaha kick for a lil' while.

Good luck on the felt, ya'll.

Why Do I Even Bother With NLHE?

Seriously.

I played my major online session of the week yesterday, and as has been the case lately, most of my NLHE action went for squat. Squidoosh. A big dump. What have you. I ended up playing a total of 25 events yesterday, all for pretty minimum buy-ins, the greatest being of the $10 variety.

Of the Hold'em section on my dance card, I only managed to cash in one two of fifteen events, and basically had my ample ass handed to me throughout the day. Crashed out of both Daily Doubles, and lost a potential really deep run in the Stars $3r when I took a bad river beat and staggered towards a semi-decent, but unfulfiling finish. All of my AA hands invariably seemed to be in the BB and got walks, and in some events, I really didn't play optimally or aggressively enough.

Flavors of Omaha, however, were again quite a different story. I played llll Omaha events yesterday, and managed to make it to the money in four of nine tries. Now, as usual, most of these were relative mincashes, where either decent draws on bustout hands whiffed, or hands ahead, sometimes with redraws, were run down.

However, my only truly deep run yesterday was, again, in an Omaha event, this being the 9:15pm MT PLO event on Full Tilt. It took me a while to get started here, where most of the first two hours found me well under average stacks, but not in any real kind of danger zone. Eventually, I was able to use a key triple up in hour 3 to build a stack, and found myself chipleader entering the final table:



As you can see, I had a decent lead, but not a truly dominating stack. Fortunately, I was able to pretty much stay on top for a while, usually taking pots down before the flop, or on the flop. There was one point where claptonic managed to take out two shorties on the same hand to jump over me, but I got my stack up, and once was as high as around 180k or so, at 4k/8k blinds. As things would have it, we got down to the final four, but that would be my high point of the day, as I began to see a steady diet of hands such as K973 rainbow.

And by the time we got to the final three, I was generally 2nd or 3rd in chips at 6k/12k blinds:



Alas, it was all soon to end, but not quite in tears:



No complaints here, in that I managed to fade 161 of the other 163 runners for a $100 cash on a $5 buyin. I don't think I missed a lot of opportunities in this one, I just couldn't get playable cards at the very end when I needed them.

But my recent Omaha runs have really left me wodnering why do I bother with HE events at the present time? I suppose the biggest reason is that I do like to multi-table, and there's just not enough Omaha MTTs firing up at a given time to let me play 3-5 events at once, especially in my $5-10 buyin range. Still, it wasn't an unsuccessful day on the whole, though it took that final event to be my Saturday saver, of sorts. And really, all of my significant cashes (being a relative word, of course), have come from Omaha, where perhaps antes don't kill me, or perhaps I can see four card possibilities better than two cards, I dunno...and so it goes.

Happy Birthday America, yo.

Good luck on the felt, ya'll.