April 2009 - Posts
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By
raildog
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Apr 26 2009, 06:05 PM
Howdy howdy howdy sports fans, and welcome to ringside for what poker connoisseurs are already calling "Tournament 158340826". Well, it's my fault that I'm here. I angrily set a deposit limit on Stars the other day and now I don't have enough cash in my account to play the 3% challenge, so a 25c 45-player sit 'n' go it is... How bad/humiliating/funny can it be? I thought I'd note down what happened to find out.
5 mins in. The going has been furious so far, with an elimination in level one when AQ bumped heads with AK and the better pre-flop hand held up. Oh my God now we have a three-way all-in, with er, 97 going at it with AK and a pair of eights. AK wins it. Slow down, boys! Let's all just live to see tomorrow, eh? I'd better make sure I don't go to war without a premium hand because these boys are showing down some quality. Well, apart from the guy with 97.
10 mins. Ooh I try to bluff on a paired board and fail! My 1.5k I down to 945, oopsy. Madman on my right goes all in to try to win the 15-30 blinds and runs into the BB's QQ. Madman has ace rag, whodaguessed it. He lucks an ace. Next hand I get AT suited, four limpers ahead of me, I go all in, get two callers with a pair of threes and J7 and hit an ace on the flop. Up to 2.7k.
KT suited next hand, 3 x BB raise from me, and four callers again! All-in is the only language these people understand. A flopped king-high flush then takes me soaring to 2.6k like a Bryan Adams movie-themed power ballad. Hang on, that's less than I had two hands ago, is this a turbo? I river a straight the next hand and now I really am the daddy of the 25c tourneys. I'm so the daddy that if I were in prison I'd be eating home-made spaghetti in my cell every night and drinking Scotch. That kind of daddy. In truth it's very sad that I can only accumulate a stack in a 25c game thanks to some big hands. Oh baby, I'm dreaming of a final table and that big, fat $3.49 first prize.
50mins. On level four (50/100) I've just bluffed on the river with 8 high when my straight draw failed, got a call and then... he mucks. Turned out my middle pair (I hadn't even noticed I’d hit it) beat his botom pair. I own this table. When the deck hits me in the face, I'm the king of the 25c scene. I'm ready for that garlic that melts in the pan if you chop it right, capiche?
Blinds 100-200. Playing it easy, just folding, keeping my head. One hour in. Break time! Down to the last 14. All very sweaty, Twelve Angry Men-ish as we try to shed the last five to make the final table. First hand after the break I win the blinds from mid by raising 2.5x with 89 suited. Everyone folds like they're at Paperboy Academy. I so want a cash! Have only had one in the new Year Zero regime. Come on the raildog!
Aces in the BB! Get it to heads up, all in, call, he has aces, too! FFS!
Lose a heap trying to steal with A8 against TT next hand. It's all going pearshaped. Down to 2.8k. AJ. 3 x BB raise. KJ flop. Hmmm, small bet of 400 from villain, I reraise to 1.2k, he folds, hurrah.
200-400. Men are losing their minds. Suckouts everywhere. You might as well get a piece of your own. I'm folding far too much, given the blinds. Time to get bold. I then do that naughty thing where you bet someone out of the pot when a third player is all in and you should be checking it down. I get a bit over-excited with top pair and go all in. Luckily I do eliminate the all-in player once the other guy has folded. I double up with top pair when I check jack turn, villain makes tiny bet I don't believe and I go all in and he calls with some crazy gutshot. Up to 10k, which makes me 3/6, but then I hit top pair with my Q6 and go all in, getting called by AQ. Oh well, fifth place, $1.01! I'm back!
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By
raildog
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Apr 26 2009, 06:03 PM
7.33pm. I can afford four, in fact, under the glorious new 3% regime but I thought I'd swap my usual tactic of 5-20 double rebuys and opt for a single buy-in and play tight. Oh well, it lasted nearly seven minutes, at which point I was dealt AQ and raised 4x to clear some limpers, which of course failed.
My normal strat would be go to go all in in that situation and see all five cards but I wasn't concentrating and of course all four limpers came with me to the flop, where one hits top pair on a medium flop, I go all in, pissed off at my stupid play, and blah blah he makes trips. So I'm on my second buy-in. $6 down. Still loving the 3% rule though.
7.37pm. I'm going on tilt even quicker than usual tonight. It's lucky I can't lose much money. Just got impatient and went all in with 65, get called by K7, flop comes 6K5. Got my 1.5k up to 2.2k. Ooh now it's 2.7k.
7.42pm. Got raised by my pal from the first hand again (he's to my right so I have position on him and so he needs teaching a lesson). He raised, I went all in with 78h (a bit Fast-Click Syndrome but I love suited connectors in this rebuy) and he calls with aces. Board comes down with two hearts... Come on the hearts! And the turn is... a heart! Flush! But make that flush to go as villain has one of his own -- and it's the ace. And the river is... a heart! Oh well... But then the chips slide towards me and I realise I've made a straight flush! Heh. Somebody up there is rewarding my new Year Zero approach. Come on the Raildog!
8.30pm. Rockets. An all-in ahead of me, I obviously call, then another call behind me. We have TT and A2 suited. Oh dear. Pocket tens always seem to get there when they're in someone else's hands. And there it is, a set of tens on the flop and ohhh who'd've guessed it, a flush draw for our other friend, who obviously gets there on the turn. My lovely, carefully curated 9k down to 4k. Am so on fucking tilt.
8.40pm. All in with KJ, lose another chunk, down to 3k.
8.45pm. Last hand before break get AJ, vs QJ and another hand I forget, no queen comes and boom I'm suddenly back to 8k! Break time! Proves ONCE AGAIN that there's no point waiting for big pairs in the small rebuys, connectors and crap always wins. Can't take the add-on though, sadly.
9.30pm. Spend too much time faffing around on the internet and fail to notice blinds are 400-600. My stack is 5k. I go all in with AJ, get called by 33 and lose the flip. If I'm going to do this 3% thing I guess have to concentrate fully on the game, too...
Starting balance: $500
Current balance: $472
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By
raildog
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Apr 23 2009, 06:00 PM
Two and a quarter hours into the first game, the $3 rebuy on Stars, I have a nice $29k when I flop a set of fives and lose 10k to someone slow-playing quad tens.
I then lose 10k when there are three diamonds on the flop and another on the turn but for some reason I can never quite believe someone else has had the good fortune to make something as big as a flush and I call with my non-diamond two pair. I then lose the last 9k when, incredibly, there are three spades on the flop and I keep betting at it, without a spade in my hand. But I guess you can blame tilt for that one. Now you see why I deserve to be in the public toilets. Why 3% is probably too high, why I should really be playing with no more than 0.03% of my bankroll in play.
On the next hand I am automatically all in with just $220 left and pocket fives again. I hope to begin a heroic double up against KQ but he rivers a king. For the second or third day running I chuck the mouse as hard as I can at the wall but damnit this Logitech model is incredible and every time the top flap just pops off and the rest is unscathed. Maybe this is what they make black box flight recorders out of.
I consider taking it downstairs and destroying it with a hammer in time-honoured style but instead I think how I have only spent $15 - that's exactly 3% of my bankroll - and how it doesn't really matter and that there are beers down at the shop. So I fuck off down the shop and write this post instead. And apart from the savage, lightning, absolutely brutal destruction of my stack in three huge, sudden stages, I played pretty well.
Balance: $485.
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By
raildog
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Apr 21 2009, 05:54 PM
That’s it. It’s all over. No more money on poker. No more bollocks. It’s been fun – actually, it hasn’t been much fun at all apart from the 2% of the time I’ve won anything – but it doesn’t matter any more, because it’s over. I have spent too much, far, far too much of my disposable income on being a poker fish, a donor to the poker economy. An idiot. I have never even tried to stick to any kind of bankroll management, and the more I have played recently, the more sloppily I have played. I am at the end of the road.
There is a final sum, which I will set at $500, and it will be played under Chris Ferguson’s 3% rule. It feels good already. If I somehow burn through this then obviously I need to put as much distance between myself and this game as possible. But that’s it. There is no more cash ever. I will stick the ongoing balance of the fund on this site to keep myself accountable.
I want to play the $3 and $5 tournaments, I want to roll around in the mud and the piss and the human filth of that level of buy-in to punish myself, De-Niro-in-The-Mission style, for my idiocy. I hope I have to drop down to $1 tourneys and then freerolls and then have to perform the worst imaginable sex acts in public lavatories on fat men to be able to pay a 10c STT at an internet cafe with no heating. I want that. I run towards that future, laughing. I want Year Zero. Because after nearly four years of playing poker, I cannot even regularly beat $10 buy-ins. I am of sub-normal intelligence. It is amazing I can even write.
It is Year Zero. The balance is $500.
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