Wow. Just Wow.

One way to successfully put me on tilt...

Deepish (well, just before bubble) in a huge field donkament...in this case, FTP's Daily Double A, when facing action from me...hem and haw in the chat box for about thirty seconds before deciding to call off all your chips in middle position with.........the mighty T6o.

Then proceed to flop trip sixes (I had ATs, by the way).

Then, berate me for the bad play of calling your bet. (Um, you, sir, acted after me in the hand.)

Then, proceed to brag about winning $300k online. When I checked, you are a lifetime -82% ROI on Stars, and while you have won a total of $26k on FTP, you've done so at a -13% ROI clip, and with nearly half of that lifetime total consisting of winning a WSOP ME satellite two years ago. Without that flukeament, your total lifetime losignitude is at least 50%.

Then, proceed to actually luckbox your way to 7th in the entire tournament, by having called off all your chips in middle position with..........the mighty T6o, for your only triple-digit cash of any kind since last September.

Well played, Chaconas, well played, sir. I can tell by your results since last weekend, you've put that money to good use.

Tilting in the Key of G

Gahhh, I don't even know where to begin. Sometimes, you get really amped about certain prospects, and if you don't rein yourself in, you do nothing but set yourself up for extreme disappointment.

Such was the case with me this week, as it regards my cyclical attempts to make some wonderful music.

After learning one of my favorite new bands, Hawks of Paradise, was losing their bass player, I did what every self-respecting fanboy bassist would do. I wrote the band, asked for an audition (they said they were auditioning replacements), and started practicing the hell out of the four tunes on the band's Myspace page.

As it turned out, I ran into a mutual acquaintance of the band's on Saturday night, while out at a show. He indicated to me that the band had actually already tried out a couple bassists, and hadn't seemed to settle on one. Of course, I hadn't heard anything from the band by this time, so on Monday, I wrote them again as a followup, and included links to some of my playing with previous bands.

Well, yesterday, I get word that the band has already found its replacement, and that the band is not interested in me auditioning. This truly sucks balls. Of course, the most obvious answer as to why is that I'm 42, and thus clearly too old to actually make interesting indie rock, and should be summarily restricted to joining classic rock cover bands. (I just threw up in my mouth a little at the prospect.) The second most obvious answer is that I'm simply not in the Denver incestuous clique of hipsters that run in concentric circles, floating in and out of each others' bands. Instead, I'm just a fan who likes the music of a lot of those bands, but I am left to conclude that while my fandom, patronage, and customer business is appreciated, I am clearly not cool enough to be qualified to actually play with them.

Of course, I am still jamming with New Ben Franklins, and I think the dudes in that project are really nice guys, and I enjoy their company. But as each week goes by, it's more and more obvious to me that I was way off on my understanding of the type of music we'd be playing. Not a criticism of the music itself (because it's well written), but I don't want to play the blues, and I don't want to play covers of multiple old country songs in the same key. The odd yet interesting idea of combining alt-country and shoegaze intrigued me, but it's just not what it turns out we're actually doing, so my interest is waning very quickly.

One the one hand, it would be really easy to just say fuck the whole thing -- if I'm not cool enough to merit an audition, I'm clearly not the type of music fan you want to see your shows and buy your records, so fuck you. But that would be incredibly immature, and really, why should I allow that to detract from my ears' enjoyment of good music. After all, I don't go to see bands with the idea in my head that someday, you're going to lose your bass player and I'm going to be their replacement. It doesn't work like that. I like awesome live local music of certain type(s), and the fact I've been trying to find a band like that to play in for years doesn't alter that fact.

As much as I like Hawks of Paradise, there's a good chance that I'll never be able to be as excited about them as I was before they decided to completely bypass me in finding their new bass player, because it will be difficult to watch them play without being jealous and envious. They really are that good, but that's just human nature. I suppose we'll see, when I go to their September 6th show.

But knowing that doesn't make me any less bitter. Bitter about the fact I am pretty much forced to live 35 miles out of town and will never be more than peripheral to the local music scene. Bitter that people seem to think that if you're over 35 (never mind over 40) that you're hopelessly out of touch with interesting and compelling music. Bitter that the only bands typically looking for bass players via Craigslist here are the usual cover bands, death/doom/speed metal, or worship bands. Bitter that circumstances required I leave the best band I was ever in, in order to be a good partner to the Good Doctor Mondo and move out west.

And, mostly, bitter that it appears I'll never again get to play the kind of music I enjoy, in a band I like and respect, onstage ever again, for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with my ability or desire to play bass.

Hope your week's better. At least my Rockies are 5-0 on their current road trip. Naturally, just enough to give us delusional types almost a reason to think our season's not done yet, when we're so toast you can call us pumpernickel.

Vega$ Trip Report - Part 2

Saturday was a very unusual, uncharacteristic day for me. How so? Well hell, first of all, I was coming off a cash in my biggest ever live tourney, measured by field size and buy-in. I was still pretty much half asleep in frog pajamas, when the Good Doctor Mondo dragged my dog ass out of bed around 9am to spend most of the day in the Lazy River pool, and as much I really don't care for pools, swimming, and all that jazz, the MGM Grand's Lazy River was really kinda cool.

Anyway, it was eventually time to play some poker, and I found a 3/6 HORSE table at the MGM. Apparently, 3/6 HORSE is a rare bird at the MGM, indeed. I was told it was only the 2nd time that game was ever spread. Unfortunately, the only thing more rare than running that game, was me having any kind of hand. I sat in at the start of Stud, and didn't win a pot until the 2nd hand of Razz. Ick. Only won a couple of pots, and dropped about $70 over nine orbits. Okay, fuck it, I'm hungry, let's grab a sammich and play some 1/2...off we go!

I sign up to find a 14 name waiting list, but it's only about 20 minutes before I'm sitting down to what appears to be a possibly profitable table. About one orbit in, I pick up KK (either UTG, or EP1, I now forget which). Naturally, I bump it to $14 to go, and I only get one caller - a large tattooed Latino guy who reminds me of some of those Unique Whips folks. Anyway, he calls, and we see a flop of 642, with two hearts (I have Kh). I didn't like the flush draw, so I bet $20, and he raises to $40. I flat call, and 6h shows up on the turn. He checks, and I'm immediately suspicious of turned trips. Still, I check behind, and the Qh shows up on the river. The dude bets $40, and I'm sure he's got a 6, but I have the K-high flush, and call. Well, the read was mostly right. He had 64. Yup, the turned boat. Yup, he called $14 PF out of position, with nothing more than 64 soooted. Nice hand, sir.

That's cool, I've still got $120, and a great read. I'll get it back. Over the next 2-3 orbits, I fold a ton of trash pockets, but watch as this same guy raises 90% of all hands preflop, between $14 and $20 each time. And when he got callers, he C-bet 90% of those times. Twice he was called down and had to show trash like T7o, so he's basically betting not ATC, but ETC (every two cards). The only times he ever folded to flop or turn bets were when he was raised off pots by a dude at the end of the table who looked...suspiciously...like his brother or cousin. They were virtually identical looking, except for the ink. And no, I'm not stereotyping. Anyway, I didn't suspect collusion, just bad aggro play. I'm gonna get paid off, eventually.

And then...BOOM. AA under the gun. Normally, I'd raise this up to $12, $14, or so. But I've got monkey aggro two seats to my right, in the small blind. He's going to raise, and I'm going to get paid. So....I....check. And then five limp behind. And monkey aggro....checks. Fuck. He raises every hand except this one. Still, the flop comes Q42 rainbow, so I feel okay. Now that we're several days later, I'm a bit fuzzy, but I believe the donk checked, I bet $20, and he and one other player called the flop. Okay. Rag on the turn, and monkey aggro shoves a stack that's now smaller than mine. Obviously, I overshove -- he's trying to push me off.

Except the player behind me calls. Monkey aggro turns over AQo, just as I thought...and then the player behind me shows 44 for the flopped set. I miss my 1 outer on the river, and 44 stacks us both. Gack.

I know, I know, I know....never limp AA. But I felt I was playing a player more than the cards that hand. He was raising every damn hand, and I knew I'd get to make a large 3-bet. Meh. If it's any consolation, I figure the 44 would have called a $14 bet PF with implied odds of the expected monkey call out of the small blind. But still, now I'm on tilt. Lost a buy-in in 45 minutes where the only hands I played were AA and KK. I needed revenge, and I was going to get it at....

....table games. Please do me a favor if you're ever with me in Vega$, and I make a move towards the table games. Stop me. I don't care how. Just stop me.

First, I dump $60 in two hands of Pai-Gow, before I realize wtf am I doing playing a game best played drunk in $5 increments, for $30 bucks a hand (and sober, at that). So I take $140 over to 3 Card Poker, where I'm quickly back up to $250. Do I leave, having recovered about 1/3 of my loss for the night? No. I swing down. I swing up. Eventually, I turn that $140 into about $350 or so. I've actually recovered over half my poker loss, and my entire Pai-Gow loss.

Do I leave? Hell no. Not until 20 minutes after the Dealer of Death arrives I lose all of that, and even $100 more. Fortunately, I stopped myself after I pulled out my very last C-note, before turning into chips that would eventually belong to Mr. MGM. What an expensive lesson. Here I am, down a few hundo for the trip thus far, even having cashed in the Mega Series, and having had one nice 1/2 session. No more table games for Mondo, ever. I can't be trusted. Every time I was up, I just knew I'd go up more. When I was down, I just knew I'd recover in a hand or two. Yup. Just say no.

I'm please to inform you that I did not play a single table game hand my entire last 38 hours in Vega$. Hopefully, hard lesson in monkey tilt learned.

Part 3 later!

Why I (Finally) Hate Poker

Never mind crashing out of both bloggerments tonight, shit like that happens, and really, I didn't play too well in those (though I had a decent moment or two in the Skillz game).

But going out of both Daily Doubles while holding AA and raising them like a man preflop, to 88 and KQ?

Fuckity fuck fuck fuck. Going out by having AA and KK go down in consecutive hands, dropping from a top 50 stack to being 570th of 570?

Fuck Full Tilt. Seriously, fuck you. Fuck you for borrowing Absolute Fraud's superuser anti random number generator doomswitch. It doesn't matter which site, it's all of you. Really. Bodog's changed their tourney schedule to something which really doesn't suit me these days (what happened to your 8:30pm 18+2?)

Ultimately, last night was one of my 2-3 worst bankroll nights ever online, if not the worst. Easily dumped nearly 20% of my bankroll. And the best part of it is, nearly all of it was attributable to losing 80/20 after 80/20 after 70/30 after 80/20. If you're on a draw no matter how thin, you need to call my raises. If you have any pocket pair, no matter how small, you need to call my pot-size bets heads up. You're giving away free money if you don't.

I must have played 15 or so tournaments last night, everything daily doubles, to $30 Bodogs, to token frenzys of different levels, even to limit Omaha. It didn't matter which tournament. Group one hands losing to A8 (but it was soooted), high pocket pairs losing to mid soooted connectors, AK down to A3, yada yada yada the list goes on and on. I think I must have lost in every possible 70% or better situation.

And yet the only ITM finish at all was in a JokerStars WSOP Round 1 freeroll, where I won a freeroll seat into their weekly finals. Yeah, fucking ironic.

It seems there's been a rash of bloggers getting pounded lately by having what seems to be every one of their strongest hands getting kicked in the balls time and again. Maybe this means I've arrived as a blogger, who knows? Naw, more likely it just makes me a whiner, but that's why there's a Blogger.com.

Yup, that about sums it up. FYFT.

I'm Through

With bar poker, that is.

Seriously.

Who fucking calls a MP call and button shove, out of the small blind for 1/3 of their stack, with...






...68, sooted or not.

Final championship tourney, top three get paid. 6th place no good because of six-fucking-eight. Naturally, the flop comes 457.

I'm through with bar poker.