Well, well, well...

Quick note to report that I was successful on Saturday with a min-cash of $270! Of course, the buy-in for the tournament was $100 - but hey, after outlasting 89 other runners, I feel pretty good!

I squeaked into the final table, mostly by folding, but of course I had to occasionally pull the trigger and stick it in to keep up with the blinds, which I'm happy to report most of the time didn't go to show down and when it did I had my pocket pairs hold up or my overs hit.

One side note, I am always shocked at the amount of "strategy talk" that goes on in live games - in between hands of course, but still - all that jibber jabber about how to best play a hand, how this guy would have played it, what this other guy thought that other guy had. Blah, blah, blah - to the point of ridiculousness.

I suppose I shouldn't complain, all that free information floating out there - most of the talkers are genuine in their espousing poker "wisdom" and really believe we should all listen up if we want to learn.

There was one fellow at my table, a rather over weight but shortish poker "nerd" who certainly knew what he was doing (for the most part) when it came to splashing chips around, but then he would go on and on afterwards about how the hand was played, what he guessed other players had, etc. etc. Even when he wasn't in the hand. He kept asking me what I had, I eventually settled on saying Ace Jack for every hand. He believed me two times and the third time he finally got suspicious.

Then I got moved and had the honor of sitting to the left of "The Professor". This fellow is a well known character at HPC and plays in just about every tournament every day. He's friendly enough, but he made the younger guy seem positively meek by comparison when it came to talking about strategery.

The Professor, simply put, couldn't shut up about how we were all supposed to play the game. And on the rare occasion he did veer off topic, it was always to complain about how certain dealers were unlucky, ie, bad.

Probably the only thing that surprises me more than people who talk poker strategy endlessly at the table, are those who think it is legitimate to berate a dealer, not for making a mistake (like miscounting, misdealing, etc.) but rather for dealing a bad beat or a long string of lousy cards.

If I ever had any doubt that a lot of these people who espouse poker strategy at the table were idiots, the fact that most of these folks also complain about dealers because of the cards they are dealt, removes all doubt from my mind.

Newsflash, degenerate assholes: The dealer, that is the human being dealing your cards, doesn't have anything to do with the hand you get or how the board runs out. The dealer in fact doesn't give a shit. Once the cards are absentmindedly shuffled, your fate is already sealed. Stop being dumb asses and get over yourselves - just as God doesn't have anything to do with who wins the Superbowl, the dealer has zero to do with what cards you get.

And if you're chirping because you think it's funny or clever, it's not. The first 10 times it's mildly entertaining - after the 100th time in two hours, I would choke you out if I wouldn't probably go to jail for it. Then again, not many juries would convict me...

The Professor is the worst offender of this disingenuous dealer abuse. He does it with a twinkle in his eye and we're all supposed to think it's cute - but underneath the surface he betrays a bitterness all to familiar to anyone who plays this game for any length of time, let alone the 50 years or so he's probably been at the tables. Poker is brutal. Poker sucks. And these minimum wage dealers / slaves are being paid to sit there and take it. But it's all in good fun. Really.

As "friendly" as he tries to be, The Professor's anger inevitably boils over when he busts out. In one of my earliest tournaments at HPC, I announced "all in" against him. He asked how much I had, I mistakenly gave him a slightly lower chip count than what I had moved across the betting line. (Lesson learned, now I don't say anything after I shove). When his hand lost to mine, and the stacks were counted, it appeared I had him covered by a couple of hundred, instead of him covering me by several hundred as I had mistakenly announced. The fact that our chip stacks were very close, whether I had him covered or vice versa, made little difference in his decision being correct or incorrect. (Honestly, I don't remember the actual hand.) If he had lost and only had 500 or so remaining, he would have been crippled - as it was he was out, not much of a difference.

No matter. The wrinkled smile faded from his lips into a cold hard stare. "You said you had 2400. Not 2900." He was pissed. I apologized. The dealer correctly pointed out that I had said all in, and he should have asked for an official count. The Professor stomped off. Nice guy. And really knows his stuff.

Also, I'm happy to report, The Professor was busted by young nerd on Saturday when we were down to two tables. It was a beautiful thing, two chatterboxes, one young one old, sitting down together. When worlds collide. The Professor had berated the nerd a few times, for raising so much when "you could be folding to the money", when the nerd popped it again from the button. The Professor insta-shoved from the small blind with AJ. The nerd snap-called with AK. Bye bye Professor, stomp, stomp, stomp.

Good times.

Run good - post a lot. Run bad - well...

So it's been awhile since I've written here. You may hazard a guess, and you would be right, that my online results have taken a turn for the worse.

I dropped 10 buy-ins on Rush poker in the space of less than a week. It was surprisingly un-traumatic, to suddenly lose half of my online bank roll in a few days. I don't think I played too terribly, though undoubtedly the last few lost buy-ins were me on a bit of monkey tilt and trying to get unstuck.

So, I'm kind of back to square one now; with my BR under $100 for the first time in two years, I've decided to drop the Rush since I clearly can't beat it - even though when I play it it is super fun and I FEEL like I should be crushing.

I'm back to MTT's and the occasional single table SNG, a much slower and more time consuming process. I would love to repeat my success of a year and a half ago when I satellited into the Double Deuce (Full Tilt's weekly 20+2 MTT) and shipped $340 - until I do, Rush will have to wait.

My live game has been pretty good this year - I've bubbled a lot in my home game (at one point 3 months in a row) but I cashed the month before last in H.O.R.S.E. Even though I have a tiny money profit, I'm near the top of the leader board in points.

I also played in Vegas recently, see the PSP Blog, and managed to finish one of three tournaments that I played in as the chip-leader when we chopped three ways for $540 each. Good times, as I felt throughout the tournament as the best or second best player at the table during every stage.

This was the first tournament. I went back to the same place the next night, but I was late and didn't have sufficient chips to get anything going. Lesson learned, live turbo tournaments are beatable, but you have to be there at the beginning and start playing right away.

When I played at the Orleans on my last night in town, I was decidedly not the best at my table - probably somewhere in the middle of the pack. I was fairly card dead, but also misplayed the hand of my demise, when I flopped trips and min-bet, giving the flush chaser the odds to catch it on the turn. By then I was pot committed, and would have been crippled had I folded to his shove. Even though I knew I was beat, I called and prayed for the board to pair. Exit me. Next time - stick it in and be happy with the medium sized profit.

Overall, I feel I'm better than I've ever been - and constantly getting better; my results with Rush have been dispiriting, but
I feel I'm with the majority of players who partake in this crack-cocaine version of the game. It's a tough nut to crack when variance is so high.

I'm very much looking forward to some live poker this weekend at Hollywood Park, the wife and kid are going to a pool party. I know if I play tight and get lucky I can bring home some cash. The play from locals in Southern California I've found is much tougher than the tourists in Vegas. It's definitely good for me to mix it up in Inglewood, even though I'm fairly close to dead money.