The last couple weeks have been pretty wild. I took a week-and-a-half vacation and read multiple Poker Books, including Sklansky's "Theory and Practice" and Harrington's workbook, a.k.a. "Harrington on Hold 'em vol 3". Good stuff. And then equipped with all that knowledge, I hopped online - and promptly got my ass PWNED all over the place.

Not the desired result.

To my credit, the litany of bad beats and bad situations I've been involved in over the last few days has been breathtaking. This of course is going to sound really, really familiar, but indulge me for a minute. These are all no limit hands:

- Pocket jacks vs. pocket queens on an all undercard board, after I raised pre-flop and he smooth-called. You can image how well that went. I didn't get stacked but it wasn't great.

- Pocket queens vs. pocket kings on an all undercard board where I hit a four-card flush, that he also ended up having. It took me to the turn to realize he had a bigger pair, and then I hit my flush and paid off another value bet from him that I probably should have just folded. Of course I'd already dumped in $6, what's another $6? Grumble grumble.

- Pocket kings vs. pocket aces. Our old friend, our regular visitor. Fuck you, old friend.

- Pocket aces vs. pocket jacks. All in pre-flop and the idiot hit a four-card flush that I did not hit.

- Flopped trips in a blind war and found out I was up against trips with the next better kicker (a jack vs. my ten).

- Flopped the nut straight with AJ on a KQT board against pocket kings, all in on the turn, board paired on the river.

- Flopped a set vs. someone that flopped a straight, board didn't pair.

- In a pot limit Omaha game: a guy was raising literally every hand pre-flop and potting the flop no matter what, so I re-raised him big pre-flop with AKKJ and then put the rest in on a queen-high, scattershot flop. He called with QJxx and the happy little queen came down on the river to bail him out. (Of course he had some other outs with his two straggler low cards, but that's not the point- it HAD to be that damn queen that came down.)

etc. etc. etc.

After this onslaught I felt like I needed a cooling off period with limited financial risk involved, so I played some cheap sit-n-goes. At one point I played three of them at once and went out like a chump on these hands:

- KK vs. A6, all in pre-flop, he flopped two pair and rivered a boat.

- KK vs. AJ, all in pre-flop, he hit his ace.

- Ah4h vs. QQ (in heads up play); I hit my ace and a flush draw on the flop, but he hit trip queens and they held up.

--

Finally, having blown through a scary number of buy-ins, I decided I needed a game where I could just grind out a small win and get some of my confidence back. Anything would do. So I turned to Party's .50/1.00 limit game.

Boy, was that a good decision. I haven't made back anything like all the money I lost in the last few horrifying sessions, but I'm going to get there soon, I think. My plan for now is just to multi-table the low limit games and grind my money back. A few days of bleeding the limit chumps on Party should be easy enough. I find those games to be soft in the most predictable way: most players are tight and play ABC limit poker, so you mostly avoid them except when you have a very solid hand; but at least 2 or 3 players at each table are bad enough that they always pay you off. I love it. During my first session of three-tabling that game, I had very few good starting hands and hit only a handful of flops, and still managed a small win. The next session, I got normal cards and made more than a buy-in in less than an hour. So I'm looking forward to playing some more of this. The only problem is that limit, to me, is a real grind - a game that gets boring quickly unless I'm playing very high stakes against better players. Against the usual weak-tights it's not an interesting game at all. But right now I'd rather win and be bored than keep losing "exciting" hands like the ones detailed above.

Of the many great questions of our time, this is perhaps the greatest: why can't all poker players be as bad and transparent as the ones playing 25 NL 6-max on PartyPoker?

I mean, I'm just crushing them. Destroying them. When I'm on my game, I can't lose to these guys. They can otudraw me and cold deck me, but they can't outplay me. It's sick. I'm talking trash like Reggie Miller and wagging my tongue like Michael Jordan. You should see me right now - it's fucking disgusting.

OK, back to reality. I really am playing out of my mind tonight. The woes of the weekend are behind me and my focus is renewed. Here are several perfect examples of what I'm doing right today:

- I raised at a table where I had a tight image with two LAggish players acting after me. They both folded (one of them had already limped in, so that was surprising). On the next hand I picked up AA and raised again, same amount. This time one of the guys called me from the SB.

He led into me for the full pot on a ten-high, scattered, rainbow board. I sensed opportunity, took my time, and flat called. The turn was another low card. He led out for the pot again and I raised; he three-bet all in and I called. Aces held against his ace ten and I doubled up my full stack.

- Different table; two people had just joined and posted blinds outside of the BB. I raised from the button with AJ, making it 1.50 to go. Only one of the two new players called, everyone else folded. The flop was jack high - something like JT5. He checked, I bet 2/3 of the pot, and then he min-raised me. I sensed that he was checking if his jack was good, but since there was a flush draw and straight draw on board I couldn't take chances, so I re-raised to 8.00. He called. The turn was a safe card and when he checked, I potted it to put him all in. He called that as well with KJ, and my hand held again. And those were my two big pots of the night - AA and TPTK with AJ, both unimproved.

But before you accuse me of just leaping into the deep end with rampant aggression, check out these two opposite examples with the same hands:

- I raised with AA from the button and a sort of bad, passive player who had limped in called my raise. On a jack-high flop he min-bet and I raised to 2/3 pot, which he called. The turn was a king - and by the way, the board was very scattered; no other broadways, and the king did not complete a draw. He checked, I bet 1/2 the pot, and he check-raised to $14 - interestingly, a few dollars short of his full stack. I typed in the chat "You just outdrew me - you have KJ" and folded. He gave me the old "LOL - how did u know that?" routine. And I don't think he was dishonest. I'm very happy with that fold.

- Different table, a player I had no read on raised 4xBB in late position and I called from the SB with AdJh. Another player called as well. The flop was AQT with two diamonds, giving me top pair second kicker, a gutshot straight draw, and a backdoor nut flush draw. I wasn't sure where I stood though so I checked it, as did the middle player. Then the pre-flop raiser bet 2/3 of the pot. I had no idea if it was a c-bet, no idea what he had; I didn't feel a fold was a good option and I hated a raise, so I called. Middle player called also, and was by this point short-stacked.

The turn brought a low blank, not a diamond, so my draw options dwindled somewhat. I checked, the middle player checked, and the original raiser bet $7 into the $9 pot. Now I thought long and hard and folded it. The middle player went all in for just a couple bucks more, and ended up losing with Ax against the other guy's AK.

--

Sure, the circumstances on these hands were different from each other, and some might say most of these plays are basically standard. But I still feel I was playing great tonight, folding when I needed to and not paying off too much, while still turning a good profit on my best hands (which were few and far between). I showed a profit of over a buyin for my 90 minute session, so I'd call that a decent night. Now if I can just get back up to 50 NL again and do this well...

Soon, my precious.

Well sir - that didn't last long.

After going up and down and up and down today, I was finally a bit down when this disgusting hand came along:

I was on the big blind with Qh5h and a LAgg raised from the button. I called... very speculative, I admit, but I was playing well and felt like I could take this guy. Or whatever. And I was kind of sick of losing my blind to his bullshit raises.

I flopped a pair of fives on a board of 7d 5d 3h, and checked. He bet the pot, $4, and I called. Basically I felt he was stealing, and liked my pair - plus with a backdoor flush draw and a real diamond draw that I could possibly rep if it hit, I felt like this pot was mine to steal.

The turn brought a black queen - cha-ching! I checked, he potted it again, and I just pushed. No point getting cute. He called... with QJ... and hit a jack on the river.

So back to 25 NL I go. Enough is enough. I'm playing fine and I realize this was nothing but a horrendous beat from a really awful player who couldn't drop a hand if his life depended on it, but I told myself I would fall back a level if I dropped to $900 or below, and I just did so. So - 50 NL, I'll see you in a couple weeks, I hope.

Today is "trudge through the sludge day" here on the ranch. By "ranch" I of course mean my palatial Indianapolis estate, which occupies 45 acres for the house and swimming pool alone, and in which I am regularly fed grapes by beautiful, topless young women of a certain pedigree.

And by "sludge" I of course am referring to Party's 50 NL game. I've put in about 3 hours and am roughly minus one buy-in. It's not for lack of trying - I've simply been cold-decked like hell. I've sat in at least five very juicy games today and come up empty-handed - not able to take advantage of any of the fish I've come across. Basically it's just dire starting hands and missing a lot of draws, or getting outdrawn when I have a thin edge. Nothing's working, but I'm hanging in there - or trying to. In retrospect, I should have realized Saturday night when I was playing my last 25 NL session and getting aces seemingly every other hand (including - not kidding - back-to-back TWICE on different tables), that things were bound to swing the other way soon enough. Soon enough in fact for me to enjoy hours of staring at 24o today.

Oh well. I do feel like my legs are back under me for this level, and if I can ever get some cards or connect with some flops, I'll prove it. I'm playing well, I think - considering that I've only won two $10+ pots today, and one was on a stone cold bluff, I'm really not doing too badly.

It's the weekend! Le weekend, as the French would say. I've got plans to go to a wonderful restaurant for dinner, and then god knows what I'm doing. The sky's the limit. I'll probably put in a million hours at the online tables this weekend; been running so well lately that I feel I should set aside a lot more time to play. So far I have not really done that. But I need to, in preparation for my next crazy initiative:

OPERATION: CONSIDER BEING A PROFESSIONAL PLAYER

OK, I'm not anywhere close to having the bankroll to do this. Not even remotely in the area. But I'm playing with great focus and adaptability lately, and I know I can succeed at higher stakes than I'm currently playing. I have in the past had good winrates up to $100 NL on Party. Once I have the cash online again to play that high, I need to think about going higher. What I would really like to do is see if I can focus and put together the bankroll to be able to play 3/6 NL. Once I get there, if I can get an acceptable BB/100 hands going, I think I could make a pretty decent living in those games. If I move up from that point, it's gravy. So I'm going to set some bankroll goals for myself first... that's step 1. In fact here it is:

Current BR: $1000
Target 1: $2000 by the end of July
Target 2: $4000 by the end of September
Target 3: $8000 by the end of November
Target 4: $12000 by Jan 1, 2007

And once I hit that mark, I'll start playing 3/6 NL.

The biggest obstacle I have is just lack of time. I really don't put in many hours lately, which means my 'roll is experiencing some seriously slow growth. I tend to make $15-40 a session recently, but my sessions might be 45 minutes to 2 hours at most, and I only get about 5 or 6 sessions in a week. Stupid job and social life! Be less time-consuming!

If I can reach my mark by Jan 1, then I'm going to spend maybe four months playing as much 3/6 as possible and see how I do. That will be the determining factor of course; the bankroll build is just laying the groundwork. So in essence I'm plotting a course over the next year or so to find out if I'm really good at poker, or if I'm just really good at talking about poker and not that great at playing it. Or it's possible that I suck at all of it. Anyway... stay tuned, true believers.

My project is finished:

http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/forum/poker-36817.htm

There it is, my FTR/poker pro-themed PartyPoker table mod. Enjoy.

--

One significant advantage of playing with the mod is that I get to cackle with delight whenever I pimp-slap a poker pro who is playing like a complete LAggtard. And because I'm still in the final stages of playing 25 NL 6-max (moving up soon, thank god - just $100 of bankroll to go) I run into plenty of them.

Over the handful of hours I played on Saturday and Sunday, I somehow got pocket aces eight or nine times. And at least half of them won a big pot for me. The best one was this beatdown I put on Phil Ivey: everyone limped in. I raised to 2.00 from the big blind with AA. Everyone folded except one obstinate fish in middle position, so two of us saw the beautiful flop of AQx. With a $5-ish pot, I decided to try a weak lead of $2 and see if I could get a nibble. Sure enough, he thought about it and raised me to $4, which I hesitantly called. The turn was the best possible card, another queen. I checked and he bet $6, which I check-raised to $13. He called. On the irrelevant river card I bet his last $7, which he called. He showed down QJo and I won a very nice pot with my aces full.

Another great aces hand, different table: a short stack with just over $5 raised to $1, and an atrocious player behind him called. Then I re-raised from the blinds to $3. This amount was picked specifically because I was hoping the short stack would go all in and trap the caller for at least $4 more before I brought the thunder. It had to be enough to make the short stack push, but then low enough that the push allowed me to re-raise. Sure enough the short stack pushed, the bad player called both raises cold, and then I pushed over the top of that for $20 more. The bad player called that as well and got effectively sandwiched out of his whole stack. He showed down AQ, the short stack had KT, and my aces held. (This one was against Raymer and Ivey.)

Overall I think I'm going to miss $25 NL. The 50 level is pretty fishy too, as I recall, but the 25 fishes are the best fishes of all. They're just decent enough that it's not out-and-out gambling every hand, but bad enough that they seem to always pay off when I want them to. Lately I lead strong every time I flop a monster, because I know SOMEONE will call me - maybe even raise me. It's such a soft game.

I'm taking a brief break from poker and the FTR forums to work on a special little project. I'll probably be done with it this weekend. I don't want to give too much away, but it's a skin for PartyPoker, and it should look pretty cool when I get done with it. I'll find a way to post it on FTR so you can all admire my handiwork.

I haven't been blogging much lately. And for that, I apologize. I've been away on business, and playing a lot of poker, and masturbating like a fiend. Sometimes life gets in the way. No, that's no good. How about: sometimes life FINDS a way. Like in "Jurassic Park." Life finds a way to sneak into the top secret facility by means of getting a job there, and then shuts down the power grid so that all the dinosaurs can run amok and do cool shit like eat people and stomp on cars. Jeff Goldblum was right!

My bankroll is seriously health-ifying, and pretty soon I'm going to be playing real stakes again. I'm excited... it's been a while. I've played at the $50 level on Party off and on recently, but I'm about to move there for good. And hopefully from there it will be a short hop to $100. (The last time I played the $50 level regularly, I crushed it.)

I don't have any really interesting Bad Beat Stories or Tales of Poker or Hand Histories to regale you with, because I tend to just post them in the forums. Maybe this week I'll try to save a few back. The only notable hand I've played recently that I didn't post was this one: crazy maniac guy is clearly drunk and raising every other hand to 2.00 or 3.00, which is hefty with a .25 big blind. He is sitting right in front of me so I am folding a lot. He raises on the button to 3.00, and I push all in with A5s, mainly because I'm tired of his crap and I don't feel like playing post-flop poker against a maniac. Folds around to him and he calls? With A6o? Woot! We split the pot. So nothing was accomplished and now there's blood in the water.

A few hands later, he min-raises. I call with Kd8d, and a guy calls behind me from the blinds as well. The flop is 456 with two diamonds. The first guy bets 2/3 the pot, the maniac calls, and I... push all in? Well, why not. I have overs, a gutshot, and the 2nd nut flush draw. The first guy folds. The maniac... calls? Again?? With 97 off???? And sure enough, he hits a nine (not the nine of diamonds, sadly) and wins a ginormous pot.

Now you would think this barely qualifies as a bad beat, but as I was replaying it in my mind I concluded I was dirtying up (or holding) a lot of his perceived outs, and had to have been a rather large favorite. I ran it and I was right - I was better than 3:1 to win. And that, my friends, is a bad beat. Even though I just had king high.

--

Tonight I'm going to see "The Proposition." I love a good western, and hopefully, this is one.

Last night was an object lesson in how poker can mistreat you if things just ain't swinging your way. Well, not YOUR way - my way. In other words, this is a bad beat post. But to hell with you, this is my blog.

I played maybe two hours last night and managed to drop three buy-ins at 25 no limit. What's exasperating about this is that it seems so hard (and rare) to go on a rush in which I win three buy-ins in that short a span of time, but losing three... that's like water spilling out of my cupped hands. All it takes is relaxing my fingers for a few seconds, and splllllaaaaaash.

Key hands were these... and when I say key, I mean it. As you can see, if one of these had swung my way it would have meant a one buy-in loss instead of three. And if two or more of them had swung my way, I would have made a solid profit for my session. Anyway:

I was playing a pretty LAggy game at a typical loose/passive table. I got AdKd in the small blind, and the first two players limped; cutoff min-raised, button called. So now I was staring at a six-way pot where every single player was going to call if I didn't fix the situation. I re-raised to $5. I figured this would be sufficient to win the $2 or so in the middle, and if not I was prepared to push most flops since the cutoff only had $14 behind. Like I said, pretty LAggy.

Well everyone folded but the cutoff, who just called. The flop was king high but all hearts. I pushed, the villain called - with AhJd. Just hideous. As you can guess, he caught his flush. And there went $20. Or as I like to think of it, a -$40 swing (since that's how much more I would have had if I had won). Behold the power of negativity.

Different table, a while later. I raised to $1 with AcTc. One player called and then one of the blinds re-raised $1. I couldn't think of folding for the min-raise so I called, even though I had him pegged for QQ+. The other player called as well.

The flop came out QcJc8x... yahtzee! The guy who had re-raised led out for $5, and I just pushed. It was an overbet since I had a $35 stack at the time, but I figured there was no point getting cute with this monster draw, just get the money in and see what happens. Then... the other player in the hand called. And the first bettor called. All three of us had $30+, so the pot was about $100 after this crazy action.

As you can guess, the turn and river went blank-blank, and I showed down ace high. The re-raiser had KhKd and it held up. The third guy had AQ. This cost me $35, but was a net -$100 swing on what was precisely a coinflip for me:

Board: Qc Jc 8s
Dead:
equity (%) win (%) tie (%)
Hand 1: 49.6678 % 49.50% 00.17% { AcTc }
Hand 2: 38.4275 % 38.43% 00.00% { KdKh }
Hand 3: 11.9048 % 11.74% 00.17% { AhQs }

Blah.

Third table, later still. Table was loose again so I had increased my standard raise to 1.50. On this hand I raised to 1.50 with AA in the cutoff, and an extremely fishy player with $15 called from the big blind. The flop was QTx; he checked, I bet $3, and he called. The turn was another low blank. He now led into me for $2. I interpreted this as a blocking bet and just pushed the rest. He called for his last $8... with J9. Offsuit. River king bailed him out, and I was swearing like a sailor with his 'nads jammed in a mousetrap. (Don't ask me how often that happens; it has to happen at least occasionally.) Another $15 down the toilet.

---

Only one of those was what I would truly classify as a bad beat, but still. Is it too much to ask for one of these to go my way? Especially the second one. To top it off, at the end of the night I was in a hand where I had flopped top two pair; a guy bet $1.5, I raised it to $4.50, and then my connection dropped. For some reason the disconnect protect didn't kick in, so I folded the next street when he didn't even bet. Fruuuuuustrating.

Oh well, back on the horse tonight. I got some grindin' to do.

---

When I wasn't losing my shirt last night, I was watching "The Good, the Bad, & The Ugly" with a friend of mine who had never seen it. If YOU'VE never seen it... see it. Just my absolute favorite western. There are few characters greater than Tuco, Blondie, and Angel Eyes. Sergio Leone was a mad genius.

For those of you who aren't "in the know," that title is a reference to the opening line of "Crazy," the internet sensation hit single from Gnarls Barkley. Cee-lo + Danger Mouse = yummy for my tummy. The album "St. Elsewhere" finally dropped, and damn, it's good. I'm listening to it today, along with some Ranking Joe (makes me feel high at work, and I don't even smoke pot at home) and Raekwon. Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, dammit!

---

My poker skeelz are all the way back. It's almost a surreal experience - I went through such a prolonged, pessimism-laced downswing that playing well and doing well are very unexpected results. But my confidence has returned in a big way. I was playing with some friends last night and broke out the whole bag of tricks. I perfectly executed a squeeze play on one guy when he raised pre-flop in Omaha and got two callers including me. After he bet and got a call, I raised the pot and got them both to fold - and I had total air, absolutely nothing. I wouldn't suggest that move more than very occasionally, but it felt good. I also employed some acting to get paid on a couple hands that by all rights I should have made basically nothing on. All in all it was a beautiful evening of poker. I went in feeling like I should take at least half a buy-in off somebody, and I beat my own goal by almost doubling up. Against uber-tight players like these, that's a pretty good accomplishment in just a few hours' play.

The only thing I'm lacking is enough hours to exploit this good run. I feel like I could be making a few hundred a week if I had a little more time, but as it is I'm just squeezing in maybe four or five hours of poker a week. And since my roll is still somewhat feeble, it's been at low stakes, too. Ah well, all in due time.

I have nothing more of interest to say today, so off you go.

The weekend is almost upon us, my merry little chitluns. What are you planning to do with your time? Wait, don't tell me. Just check these boxes on your computer screen. (Use a Sharpie.)

[ ] Stack off to someone's bottom set with your overpair five or six times
[ ] Watch TV until you crumble into a vaguely person-shaped pile of organic waste
[ ] Masturbate vigorously and repeatedly while watching your neighbor through the venetian blinds and pretending he's a woman (but only while he's facing away from you)
[ ] See Mission: Impossible 3 and cry soft little tears of sadness that Tom didn't choose you over Katie Holmes to induct into his religious cult
[ ] Get sued by the good, understanding folks at Scientology Inc.
[ ] Find yourself reduced to $2 in your online poker account, but unable to actually lose that last, petty amount - going so far as to crack AA with 93o as the site's engine desperately tries to convince you that your luck is changing and you really should deposit more money, quick
[ ] 72 straight hours of porn followed by naked, hand-blistered suicide
[ ] Make wisecracks on the intarweb to prove your cleverness to a handful of dangerous lunatics and gambling addicts

---

Stuff you should seek out, chapter a million:

There's a group called Melt-Banana... Wait, stop right there. They play lightspeed punk/metal with serious avant-noise influences, and their lead singer is a chirpy Japanese girl who sounds sort of like a broken cat toy, more so than an actual person singing. If you're still interested, keep reading. ...and this group has an album that's sort of recent called "Cell-Scape." It's the best lightspeed punk/metal/noise album ever. I don't know how an album can be furiously abrasive and adorable at the same time, but they pulled it off.

OHHHH man - those bastards from the Skywalker Ranch just announced that the original "Star Wars" trilogy will be released in its original, non-Greedo-shooting-first, non-CGI-suckfest form, on DVD, in September. Yeah, I'm a nerd. I don't care. This is news. This is good, good news. Wait patiently, then buy.

From the movies-you-can-buy-right-now department: do you like kung fu movies? Do you like classic era, Shaw Bros. kung fu movies like they used to occasionally show on USA on the weekends? And do you also like titles that have hilarious double meanings, only their creators were almost certainly unaware of it? If all of this describes you, please go order a copy of the DVD for "Dirty Ho."

(Man, that never fails to make me grin.)

You want to hear some bad beats? Check this out. I had quad aces all in preflop (Omaha) and this guy with his shitty hand (two different suits - that's not even a flush draw! plus no pairs, and no card higher than a JACK. wtf kinda hand is 8s9cTsJc?? ) took me down. How does that hand end up with a straight? My hand had higher cards in it! Four of them! And since when does four of a kind not beat a straight? Omaha's a weird game LOL.

This other hand, I was playing hold 'em and I had pocket eights, and this guy re-raised me and so I went all in, 'cuz fuck him, right? I hit an 8 on the flop!!!!!!! But then it turned out he had pocket kings and hit a king, and actually that 8 I thought I hit was a 9. Talk about a bad beat!!!!!11

The worst thing though, I had AK six times and I went all in cold with all six of them. I always do that, you should try it. Here was the result though: five times everybody folded and I won like 40 cents, and the last time I got called, and the guy had pocket kings (again with that hand! ) and he won and I lost $25. Wtf is that?? Had to be at least a fifty percent chance I'd win, between hitting an ace or hitting a straight. Or I could have made two different flushes, since it was AK offsuit. Online poker is SO RIGGED.

---

Stuff to try today:

~ Play cards in reverse, like you want to lose money. Fold your best hands. Call with your worst hands. Only raise when someone else has already bet or raised strong. If someone re-raises you and you have nothing, jam all in. I guarantee* you, at mid-level stakes like the 50 or 100 tables at Party, you'll break even or come out ahead.

*This guarantee is not guaranteed.

~ Play cards blind. Not just without seeing your cards - blindfolded. You'll be clicking on random shit, typing in strange amounts and bets with letters instead of numbers... it will freak everybody out, put them on tilt, and result in you winning a fortune.

~ Tell the people at your tables that you have only seconds to live and just want to win one last pot before you go. Then bet all but one cent of their stack, and beg them to call and then fold on the next street.

---

Out of ideas! see ya.

I figured it out. Bad luck in poker is like a relay race. If you want, you can insist on racing around the track by yourself with no help. But me, I'd rather pass the baton and let somebody else suffer.

My good friend Kevin is kind of my life-long companion, in the "we're not gay" sense of the expression. We are basically competitors of the first rank. No matter what hobby we take up, our success in it is defined only in relation to one another. We play Halo every week with friends, always on opposite teams, and we talk voluminous amounts of trash after every kill we score against the other guy. We played basketball one-on-one, just one time (which is funny, because Kevin is 6'7" and used to play college ball, and can dunk and knock down threes like he's sleepwalking; I, on the other hand, am 5'10", never played organized sports at any level, and can only dunk donuts or small children at the public swimming pool. Yet somehow, that afternoon I elevated my game to a level I didn't even know I had. We were playing 1 point for most shots, 2 points for long-range, go to 9 points and you have to win by at least two. Well, somehow I forced several ties until it was 12-12, and then, with Kevin putting all his energy into getting a stop on me any time I drove to the basket, I ended up backing off four or five steps behind the three point line and heaving up a prayer that ripped the net. Now you tell ME how the hell I won that game. Sheer force of will, I tell you, and I couldn't repeat the performance in a million tries).

Of course, the number one thing we compete in is poker. He's my heads-up buddy, and a regular home game attendee; he's also the guy I talk strategy with, the guy I introduced to online poker about eight months ago. And now, he's the recipient of my bad luck baton.

For a few weeks we were running stride for stride and I was trying to hand the thing off. He had his fingers on it. The bad beats were a tell-tale sign. His bankroll was freaking out like a Mexican jumping bean... the poor bastard went from $150 (his initial deposit) all the way up over $1000, then down to $500 (he spent half of it buying a laptop to play on). Then it dwindled and waned and almost vanished. Tuesday afternoon, after another bad run, he was down to $140. And then there was yesterday.

Kevin IM'ed me around 1:00 and opened, as he often does, with a terse recap of his last couple of significant hands:

"I had AA against KK, all in preflop"
"and he hit a king"
"then I had KK against AA all in"
"and I didnt hit a king"

Ouch. Even at the piddly $25 stakes we're both playing currently, a two-buyin hit really hurts when you only have $140. I went to look him up on Party and there he was at a $50 table, aggressively trying to either get it all back (the whole $1000, I'm guessing), or go broke.

Sure enough, he went broke. Waste of his last $90 if you ask me, but I can't say I've never done anything that stupid. It sure does blow off steam.

So Kevin's running along now with the baton, and that's me sitting idly at the side of the track - picking blades of grass and rubbing the sweat off my head. And if you haven't enjoyed yet another of my tortured metaphor-slash-analogies, you either don't know shit about writing or don't know shit about poker. Piss off, fancy boy.

Man - where the hell have I been?

Oh yes. I was busy quitting poker a hundred times or so.

First, let's get my little insecurities out of the way up front. I virtually disappeared from the FTR forums, and quite completely disappeared from this here blog, for the last couple months. But did any of you miss me or say anything? Noooooooooo. You're all too self-involved, too busy making craploads of money, too enamored of "Lost" or whatever. Would it kill ya to post some morbid speculation about me? Maybe a little "dalecooper might have committed suicide! all the warning signs were there!"? C'mon. Make a guy feel wanted.

Anyway. What I've been doing since the last time I updated this, was enjoying still more downswing, contemplating quitting poker altogether, actually quitting poker for a couple of days here and there, and then slowly being sucked back in. That's always the way, isn't it? I hope I've come out the other side of this a better and more adaptive player - time will tell.

The downswing I've been on, touched upon in this blog numerous times, was really a combination - as they all are - of running bad, and letting the bad luck push me into making bad decisions. I didn't spend much of the time on actual tilt; instead I just sprung one leak after another in a semi-crazed attempt to find a style of play that would compensate for all the second best hands and horrible beats. I went through a stretch where I lost with (literally) half of my sets. If someone didn't have a higher set on the flop - which happened five times total during my bad run of about five months - then they had a draw and would suck out on me, with no re-suck forthcoming. Two times I flopped a set, got all the money in against someone with just a flush draw, and both times the guy hit, and I didn't fill up.

And if it wasn't sets it was other nonsense. I flopped a made flush with an open-ended straight flush draw built into it, and ended up getting all the money in on the flop against a guy who had nothing more than top pair (queens) with a jack of the same suit as the flop. A fourth heart came down - not one of the two that would have made me a straight flush - and he won the pot. That was discouraging, to say the least. Another time I had a big fat fish on the hook - the kind of guy that I would bet the pot on the flop with top pair, and he'd call me with one overcard and three live outs. A really, really bad player. That guy on one hand called me with his K3 pre-flop; called a pot-sized bet on the flop (king overcard, no pair); then proceeded to hit running threes, and thus de-stacked me. I had pocket queens. It was really something.

The cumulative effect of all that was bad. There were so many hands that burned into my memory instantly, like that creepy German guy with the squid lips in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" when he grabs the fire-heated medallion and thus brands his palm with the location of the Well of the Souls. On top of that I was running bad in sit-n-goes and multi-table tourneys, losing most coinflips and even hands where I had slight edges (60/40s and worse). Nothing seemed to go my way. So naturally I started pressing. All the time.

I would overbet to protect hands. I would overbet on bluffs. I would raise comical amounts with eye-widening frequency. In cash games I wasn't trying to be the table bully - I was trying to pick up the table and smash my opponents over the head with it, then use the splintered legs as spits and roast their corpses on a raging fire. Of course when people pick up on this it quickly becomes an epic leak. I was playing this way against even my friends in our friendly, .10/.20 cash game at my house, and they were slowly picking me apart at the right moments. And when I wasn't doing that, I was indulging my new favorite leak, which is paying off everything. Whenever people drew out on me, and I knew it, I would still call that last bet or raise every time. I would argue in my mind that it was because the pot odds demanded a call, but I knew I was beat, and the odds weren't always that good. Mostly I just wanted to wallow in my continuing bad luck. I wanted to get up from the table, stare at yet another improbable hand that had outflopped me or outdrawn me, and throw a giant pity party for myself. And I was fucking great at it.

--

Well, no more. I know when the turnaround happened. One night a friend and I were playing heads up, something we had been doing about once a week, either just for bragging rights or for a buck or two. No real money at stake - we just like to test each other. That night I was switching with great relish between pressing too hard and paying off too much, and between that and the fact that he was simply getting much better cards than me, I managed to lose four heads up matches in a row. Now, even though this guy is a good player, I don't think I have *ever* lost four heads up matches in a row. Before that night I don't think I had ever lost three in a row. I'm a good heads up player - playing the player and adjusting my strategy used to be my two biggest strengths. At the end of those matches, as I sat there and fumed and considered (again) giving it all up, I realized: I fucking suck now.

Sure I've been running bad and getting too many second best hands and all that, but I went out of my way to thwart some of my greatest strengths. I discussed it with my friend and he agreed with me - he knew I had been doing it, and he had been taking advantage. So: no more. I got back online, lowered my stakes to salvage an increasingly meager bankroll, and through force of will I turned it around.

I'm not going to say I'm back all the way yet, or that in a week I'll be back at the $50 and $100 tables cleaning up like I used to. It's going to take time. I spent basically the last six months getting myself into a perpetual loser's mentality: expecting to lose, sub-consciously wanting to lose, and trying way too hard to not lose in all the wrong ways. My friends (can I call you my friends? you didn't even notice I'd committed suicide, for fuck's sake. I hate you people) - poker is a wood screw that has to be put into a two-by-four. The best way to do it is to start a small hole with the right size drill bit, just smaller than the screw itself. Then you work the screw in with a screwdriver, at a regular speed and with a steady hand. You don't go too slow or too fast, and you can't shake around or force it in. If you do it the right way, at an even pace, with just the right amount of pressure, it will go in like it's meant to.

But if you do like I did, and break out the sledgehammer, you're going to bust open that hole and break that screw. Poker is not going to be nice to you if you do it wrong.

--

Enough about that. I've made a couple hundred dollars in the last week playing poker, and I'm happy with that result. I want to keep the ball rolling, but I don't want to jinx it.

What else have I been doing? Watching "Lost" mainly. I never watched this show until a couple weeks ago, when some friends loaned us the DVD set of season 1. We watched it start to finish, voraciously, and then I torrented the entirety of season 2 through episode 18, and set my DVR to record any new ones until I can get caught up. This is a good show. It has some cheesy moments and some, shall we say, plausibility gaps - but it has real potential. If they do it right it can be the show "The X-Files" should have been, and more (because they have more talent involved with "Lost". It could be something great. I hope they don't take a pile of money from the network and keep stretching it out, because that could ruin it. A premise like this has a natural lifespan; I'm thinking three seasons is probably plenty. Look at "The Prisoner" - wrapped up in 17 episodes, and McGoohan didn't even want to do that many. Look at "Twin Peaks" - it was really in its prime for only one year, and half of the second season is filler (at least until that slam-bang finale). Don't do that to me, "Lost." Wrap things up right.

I'm not actually in hell, but damn, a lot of things are sucking right now. I don't want to get into a protracted whine here, so I'll ram it all together, run-on sentence style:

Well let's see I got sick, and I've had this sore throat for two days now and it isn't going away at all, and oh yeah I busted out of three multi-table tournaments yesterday, and on the last one my jacks lost to K7 (sooooooted! ) because some crazy-loose a-hole was sitting on such a large mountain of chips that he couldn't be bothered to fold, and then today in a cash game I once again got de-stacked when I had a set of threes to someone else's set of kings, which makes the third time in three months, in case you're curious.

But on the brighter side of things, I received my free laptop from Party Poker, and it's pretty nice; and tonight I'm going out of town, which means no work for the next two days. Instead I'll be sitting in a hotel room with my girlfriend, eating pizza and recuperating from my illness. Not so bad, my friends, not so bad. Me and my girl and my laptop are gonna blow this crappy scene and make a new one. Don't expect any reports - while you're here in the old scene, I won't be thinking of you.

BOOK/MOVIE TANDEMS OF THE MONTH

1. "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Required reading of course, but the movie version is good too, and surprisingly faithful.

2. "The Orchid Thief"/"Adaptation." A surprisingly interesting book, a great (and very weird) movie that is only tangentially related to its alleged source material. Speaking of which:

3. "Naked Lunch." Take some drugs and inflict this combination on your brain.

4. "LA Confidential." Just got done reading this for the first time and seeing it for the umpteenth time. The movie - well you've probably seen it, and it's terrific. But the book is a more dangerous, scary animal. And if you think you already know how it ends... trust me, you don't. The book has a really... really... fucked up ending.

HOME REMEDIES FOR SORE THROATS OF THE MONTH

Got any? I'm sick of gargling salt water. It's barely working anyway.

POKER HAND OF THE MONTH

If you're not watching the high stakes poker cash game show on GSN, I pity the fool (a.k.a. you). Start watching. Last night's episode was brilliant - typical Sammy Farha, gunning down the table but making good folds here and there. And then this doozy comes along:

It's the last hand of the night. Most players are getting up from the table as soon as they fold, and the last couple hands have been uneventful - less raising, more limping, less betting, and more checking. But on this hand, Barry Greenstein raises with AA. And Sammy - poor Sammy looks down at pocket kings. So he re-raises. Everybody else folds, and they're still migrating out the door slowly. And then Barry re-raises by a huge amount, $50,000 into a pot of less than thirty, and you can see & feel everyone freezing. That unmistakable "something big is happening" vibe hits.

Sammy feels it too. You can tell. He plays with his cards, plays with his chips. He looks at Barry and shoots him a playful-but-serious comment - something like "It's the last hand of the night! You really want to get into this?" Barry says nothing. He definitely wants to get into this.

For a couple of minutes Sammy visibly and audibly toys with his next move. He has Barry covered, but he's ahead now and would be stuck if he goes all in and loses. He hems and haws. Everything he says and does makes it seem like he's on the verge of making the unthinkable fold - throwing away the kings. Finally and abruptly, almost like he's doing it before he can stop himself, he goes all in. Barry, of course, calls without hesitation. As they throw their cards over, Sammy says "You have aces?" He knows. And there they are, Barry's aces. Sammy's dead.

And a king flops.

Something like $200,000 changes hands over that king.

Sammy Farha - crazy-ass gambler, almost makes the greatest possible no limit laydown, instead gets very lucky... and proves that, like Matusow says, Poker! It's all skill! Start with the worst hand and go uphill...

Last night two big things happened in my house: 1. I got 5th in a 99 player MTT, and while the cash wasn't huge, it felt reaaaaal nice. 2. I got into an argument with my girlfriend and my closest male friend about muslims.

The MTT was fun, although as with all poker lately, it confirmed my suspicions that the game is a marionette dangling from the sadistic fingers of a puppetmaster named Luck. How else to explain the way all the key hands of the evening went down?

- I got pocket aces and some poor bastard with not much of a stack made a good-sized raise. I of course re-raised him all in, and he had AK suited. I'm sure he was thinking it was his meal ticket, his chance (finally! O happy day! ) to double up. Nope!

- I got A8 on the button and raised into the blinds. One of them went all in, and since we were short-handed and it cost me not much more to call, I called. He had jacks, and I hit an ace.

- I had AK of diamonds on the final table, and a loose/aggressive type opened for 3xBB. I went all in, he called with QQ. The flop was king high with two diamonds (I'm a lock! ). The turn was the one non-diamond queen (noooo! ). The river was some salt in the wound, a king that gave me two pair but not the winning hand (FUUUUUCK). I stared at that hand history for five minutes afterward trying to figure out what happened.

- Next hand, with only 3xBB left and my big blind approaching, I pushed with A4o. I got called by AJ, hit a 4 and doubled up to stay alive.

And so on. This has been all my poker playing lately: weird suckouts both by me and against me; coinflips that result in stunning reversals and leave one guy feeling like someone was pounding on his groin while the cards rolled out; etc. etc. I don't know what's going on the universe that my tournaments always seem to come down to these bizarre hands, but since I've cashed twice in my last four multi's, for at least four times my buy-in both times, I guess I can't complain.

---

The muslim thing: I intended to talk about that here, but suddenly, I'm feeling like talking poker. For once. So that will have to wait for another day. It's fascinating though, really. I can feel you vibrating with excitement.

---

I don't think I mentioned on here about the live tourney I played last weekend. $60 buy-in, 80 players, I came in 12th, top 8 got paid. Oh well. I was playing well all night until it got down to two tables, then things went haywire. Here are two key hands that I'm still pondering:

1. We had 7 players at my table when I found myself with KQ, second to act. A lady limped in from UTG. I had no read on her, having played at the table for only a few hands. I myself had only four or five times the big blind, and every player at the table except this lady had me outstacked badly (she only had another 2xBB behind her raise - which probably should have been a warning), so I figured it was worth a push. After I went all in, a loose and crazy player on the small blind called me, and the limper called me as well. It must be said, this was not too different from the result I was expecting - I was just hoping not to be dominated by either of them.

Well, she had AK and he had AT, so I was in bad shape. And when the flop was an ace and two low cards, I thought I was dead. I started to get up from the table when the turn came out a jack, and at the same time the loose guy was saying "come on! give me a ten!" And wouldn't you know it - the river was one of the three remaining tens, giving me Broadway. I stared in disbelief, the lady stared in disbelief, and the crazy guy started yelping with joy because he thought he had won the pot. Very funny. Eventually the dealer pushed me all my ill-gotten chips and I put together a good run for a while after that.

2. We had 6 players left, and the big blind was now occupied by a friend of mine who I know is very tight and pretty passive. He's folded to my bets more than any other player I know. In addition, I had been folding my chips away for a while, because the blinds were big and at least two of the players at the table were borderline-certifiable with the raises and calls they were making. They had chips to spare and didn't care, so I was working hard to establish that I ONLY PLAYED GOOD HANDS. So back to the hand in question - I was UTG with K8o. Clearly a terrible hand, but I had maybe 4xBB left and the blinds were right on my heels. So I figured I could work my table image for once, and I pushed. Sure enough, they all folded like good little dominoes... right around to my friend on the big blind. He stared at his cards and then looked at me, very hesitant, and said, "Oh man, I've got a real hand!" I knew this was trouble. I said (in my best Oscar-winning fake jovial voice), "Well so do I. Let's get this show on the road!" I was hoping the bravado would scare him off.

It didn't, and here's why: in his tortured little mind, it would be very weak/tight to fold his hand (pocket tens) given that he only had a few big blinds left himself. And he hates looking weak/tight in front of me, because I give him so much crap about it. Worse still, he is a good friend, and figured since we were both short-stacked, he may as well double me up if he has to get knocked out. So he called, thinking there was a strong chance I had him dominated or at least had two overcards, but figuring that if he dumped his scant few chips in my lap, it was a noble sacrifice. Sick, right? I of course had to turn over my K8 with much chagrin, and his tens held. And then after I left, a guy at the table started talking shit about me: "Man, that guy played so tight and then went all in with king eight? Whatthefuck was that about?" I wasn't even around to defend my honor, I had to hear about it from Mark later. Bleagh.

But overall I was happy with my performance and place in that tournament. Next time it's final table, no bust.

Work productivity is a funny thing. I come in to work at 9 am and within the first hour, I've done 1/3 of the work that I will do for the entire day. This isn't planned, it's just how things go: I come in fired up, dive into the pile, and get shit done. Then I slow down, and for the next couple hours I do roughly as much as I did during the first hour. Then I take a lunch, and it's all downhill - the remaining half of the day, I do about as much as I did during that first hour, again. So if you broke my productivity down into units, it would go like this:

9 - 10: 1 unit (1 units/hr)
10 - 12: 1 unit (.5 units/hr)
1 - 6: 1 unit (.2 units/hr)

Apparently I work 1/5th as hard all afternoon as I do when I first come in. And even more interestingly, I think my company - in fact, most companies - plan for this. They understand that they'll never drag maximum productivity out of their employees. They're just hoping for a decent average rate.

What really sucks is when you get a new co-worker who - at least briefly - blasts away at maximum productivity all day long. That person will make everybody else look so bad, that the company can't help but decrease your raises and start giving you ominous, threatening performance reviews that sour your routine afternoon of internet surfing and blog posting. Eventually you come to work glum and unhappy, and you work less hard even during that critical first hour; they threaten you some more, you get unhappier still; and finally you get fired. All because of some eager beaver who put in three good weeks of work because the idiot was fresh out of college and didn't know any better. One week after you're gone, the idiot is moving at half-speed like everybody else, and a few months later starts getting threatening reviews of his/her own. It's the circle of life.

In other news, I am getting my poker legs back somewhat, and playing poker isn't an all-the-time suckfest any more. I've made money three of my last four sessions, and the fourth was just a minor speedbump, not one of those "someone bring me a shotgun and one of those wooden backscratchers shaped like a little hand so I can pull the trigger when it's slightly out of reach" evenings. I placed 12th in a live tournament with 80 players, which was just out of the money but felt good and life-affirming. I placed 23rd in a 750 player MTT, which was in the money but sadly didn't change the landscape of my bankroll that much. You really have to make final tables to make money in those things, I'm finding. I have placed 2nd in numerous SnG's lately - for some reason the 1st is eluding me - and I tore up one cash game the other night, and got torn up in another. Overall, I'm feeling a-ight about poker. I'm playing a home game tourney next weekend, so hopefully I'm peaking at just the right time for this thing - there's nothing so joyous as pimp-slapping your friends in poker.

In music news, I'm going through a serious, long-term funk jones. I just bought something like nine Parliament/Funkadelic CDs online, and hopefully that will get me through. I don't know what gene in my white boy body kicked in to make me go so crazy for this stuff, but I'm lovin' it, McDonalds-style.

Note to self: Get some McNuggets after work. Make sweet love to them in a hot tub full of hot mustard.

And with that, we're oooouuuuuuut.

If I have one fault as a writer - IF I do - it's that I am sometimes predisposed to just ramble on and on. I can't tell a story or make a point without devoting several meaty paragraphs to it. And why use one adjective when four or five will do? Why just say what I mean, when I can hint around at it and then add parenthetical remarks explaining myself more completely?

Yes, I'd say I'm the perfectest writer-guy there ever was.

Anyway, here's some shit I've been thinking about in bite-size morsels, instead of plate-filling, buffet-robbing, waistline-expanding food-as-word-metaphor super-verbosity:

I actually made $75 playing poker last night for an hour. It will take about fifty more nights like that before I believe the downturn is over, but hey: I made some money. And I got involved in some very hilarious suckouts, which is always nice.

I saw a trailer and read some reviews for this movie called "Zombie Honeymoon." If that title intrigues you even a little bit, I won't ruin it for you - get thee to Google and look it up. The DVD is coming out Feb. 14th (good marketing savvy! ) and I'm definitely buying it.

I'm on a diet. The most annoying thing about dieting is not the decreased food volume - I can live with that. No, it's when you have plans to go out for dinner, so you know you can't eat a damn thing until then or you'll go way over your calories. But for the Chinese last night, it was worth it.

The Colbert Report is not as funny now as it was when it launched, and it's not as funny as The Daily Show. I still love the gimmick (Colbert is a pompous, Bill O'Reilly-esque ass) and the "The Word" segments, but it seems like the writing has slipped a bit.

70's funk and jazz-funk might be the best music there is. I dare you to listen to "Funky Worm" or "Chameleon" or "Mothership Connection" and then say to my face that there's better music than that. And if you do it - well, you're wrong, mister. Just wrong.

...Although, Snoop Dogg's early work ("The Chronic" and that album with "Gin & Juice" on it) is close. I don't care if I have to hand in my music snob credentials: Snoop is tha shiznit, biiaaatch.

I apologize for that previous item.

Grand Theft Auto next-gen might be the best video game that it is possible to make. GTA San Andreas is already damn close. I hope they bring back the GTA3 "litter blowing around" effect. But what they really need is a big, persistent-world multiplayer server. I may actually turn off my real life and start living as a GTA virtual person if they make this happen.

I still haven't received the laptop I won from Party Poker. Fuck you, PP! Big ups, west siiiiide!

I apologize for THAT previous item, too. I'm listening to way too much hip hop and funk lately... if that's possible.

--

The Superbowl is this weekend, and jimmy crack corn, and I don't give a shit. It would be nice if my buddy's team, the Pittsburgh somethings, won the game - don't get me wrong. It would be nice for HIM. But me, personally, I'm on the verge of giving up on sports.

There is nothing more tiresome... no, make that heart-breakingly, soul-wrenchingly infuriating... than being a big fan of teams that seem to be on the brink of greatness, and then never get there. And if that description doesn't immediately bring to mind the Indianapolis Colts and the Indiana Pacers, you probably don't follow sports, do you, ya little monkey? Go back to your "American Idol" and knit me a sweater, you GIRL. Jeeeez.

Now that that's settled - have there been two more disappointing teams in the NFL and NBA in the past few years than the Colts and the Pacers? Take a look:

2003: Colts go 12-4, win the AFC South by virtue of a tiebreaker over the Titans. They go into the wildcard round and steamroll Denver - just flat-out embarrass them. Then they prevail in a wild shootout with Kansas City, the team that started 9-0 that year. Everybody predicts the Colts are going to roll over the Patriots and go to the Superbowl, which they will probably win. Instead, the Patriots whomp them - by a margin far larger than the 10 point differential on the scoreboard at the end of the game.

At the same time, the Pacers win 61 games - a franchise record and league-best that year. Despite the fact that Ron Artest is clearly crazier than a rabid chicken, everyone thinks the Pacers are THE team to be reckoned with in the east. Then Detroit shuts 'em down, Tayshaun "People Call Me Gumby, But Gumby Doesn't Look Like He Has Several Horrific Diseases" Prince blocks a breakaway layup by Reggie Miller, and Ron-Ron devolves into a single-celled life form on the play at the end of the deciding game, where he whacked Rip Hamilton for basically no reason, giving the game away.

2004: Stop me if you've heard this one before: Colts go 12-4, win the AFC South (although this time easily). They go into the wildcard round and steamroll Denver, just flat-out embarrass them. Everybody predicts the Colts are going to finally beat the Patriots and go to the Superbowl, which they will probably win. Instead the Colts lose a real stink-bomb of a game, 20 to 3. Gulp.

At the same time, the Pacers start the season 12-4 and look like one of the best teams in the league as they are easily handling the Pistons, the previous year's champs, in Detroit. Then the wheels come off. A towel is thrown, a scorer's table is used as a bed, a drink wends its way to Ron-Ron's chest, and all hell breaks loose. David Stern over-punishes the team and as a result of the fracas, they endure a miserable, suspension-and-injury-plagued season where they barely squeak into the playoffs, and lose - again - to Detroit, as Reggie Miller retires. A sad, sad day.

2005: Colts start 13-0, finish 14-2, win the AFC South... and almost immediately crap their pants while the Steelers point and laugh. Just an ugly end to what should have been a magical, storybook season. Throw in the mess with Dungy's son and this was all the way around just about as bad as the year could have concluded.

At the same time, the Pacers are struggling badly, are in the middle of a lengthy losing streak, have lost Jermaine O'Neal for many weeks and perhaps the entire season, had to trade Ron Artest (finally) for an often-injured and basically un-impactful Peja Stojwhateverhisnameis, and basically look like they've given. the fuck. UP. Watching this Pacer team this year, I can only reflect back on the team they had right after the trade that sent Jalen Rose to Chicago. They had Jermaine, an up-and-coming franchise player... a real superstar in the making. They had Al Harrington and Jon Bender, two of the most promising young athletes in the league. They had Brad Miller, a solid and capable center; they had Ron Artest, a bonafide top twenty player in the league (and now, easily, top ten - although just in terms of talent), and a defensive stopper like no other. They had Reggie, the veteran, the dagger guy, the guy with ice water in his veins. And they had a handful of decent role players who could do what had to be done. Finally, they had a real coach - Isiah Thomas's replacement, Rick Carlisle, obviously one of the top three coaches in the league. That team was GOING to win a championship. And it was going to be a dynasty. This was a can't-miss proposition.

Well... it missed. Big time. What's left of that team now? Half those players are gone and it seems like they held on to the wrong half.

And as far as the Colts go, I think they have a good shot at winning a Superbowl. In ten years or so, when Manning retires.

We have a lot of ground to cover today, so let's get started without all the usual hullabaloo and fooferaw. Let's jump straight in. Let's get past all the mindless, hopeless fucking about and GACK AGH

(note: the original writer of this blog has just been strangled. A new writer, cloned from his genetic material and implanted with the most pertinent of his memories, has been brought in to replace him. We think you will enjoy his matter-of-fact, to-the-point writing style. And if you don't, some stranglin' is comin' your way. Just so you know.)

Item 1: Why People Retire From Poker

Who are the guys that retire from poker? You've seen them around. A few of them have passed through the hallowed halls of FTR. They post frequently, boast about their bankrolls, come to the brink of "going pro," etc. Then one day they stop posting. And a few weeks later there's a sad farewell note. It usually mentions some vague things about bankroll loss and a bad turn and maybe owing some money. In the immortal words of Fred Willard - wha' happened?

I'll tell you wha' fucking happened. Statistics caught up with them. Then statistics grabbed them by the ankles and used their faces to plunge out a particularly befouled toilet.

If you've been around poker for a while, and have fully immersed yourself in reading books, forums, Cardplayer, and so forth, you have at some point read a detailed article about downswings. Downswings happen to everybody, and they can last a day, a week, a month, or longer. The infuriating thing about a downswing is that it's difficult to extricate it from bad play - trying to sort out how much of the damage is self-inflicted, how many leaks you could tighten up, that sort of thing. You just don't know. But several articles on downswings have mentioned that the best pro at the top of his game could still, statistically speaking, hit a downswing that lasted for months - and lose money throughout that entire period, while playing his BEST. You see - that's sick. That's poker.

I used to think this was just a cute math concept with little real world application. Now I know better.

I've detailed in this blog a few moments in a recent downswing that I thought was behind me. It turns out that I've had a very few highlight-reel days that made me feel better about myself, and suckered me into continuing to play while I was, overall, still having the worst luck of my life. There's no point going into details because every poker player knows them: the two and three out beats, the long stretches of losing seemingly every single race, the runs of cold cards - whatever. I've always had days like that, and once, on a spectacularly frustrating day, I burned through 1/3 of my bankroll going through basically all of it at once. Yes, I've had downswings.

But not like this.

I'm now, by my count, in month three of a PERSISTENT downswing. Over this time, despite booking one huge MTT win (actually a 2nd place finish), I've lost probably four or five hundred dollars. Doesn't sound like much, but if it hadn't been for that one nice MTT I had, I'd have torched my entire bankroll by now. That's very sobering. And while I've had my moments of tilt and made some bad decisions, I don't think I'm playing bad poker right now. I think I'm mostly playing pretty good poker, with some scattered days where I play worse and some where I play brilliantly; in other words, I'm playing like I did for most of the first couple years I was playing, during which I consistently made money. But I can't get over the hump.

End whine. Just take this as a forewarning: my day is coming. If I play another three months and lose another five hundred, I'm going to retire. It's just not worth it to me to keep pursuing this if it keeps sucker-punching me at every opportunity.

Item 2: OK, I Lied

I am going to tell you just one thing that's been happening to me with astonishing regularity. And the baffling part is that this rarely happened to me during the long run I had where I was doing so well. It is: two and three out beats. I'm sure I had thirty or forty of them over the first two years I played... well, in the last three months I've had about that many, as well. I played for two hours yesterday and had two of them. The second cost me $50 in a cash game, when a worse two pair (sixes and threes) rivered a three against my sixes and fives. Worst player ever basically tries to donate me his stack, and sucks out - it's the most PREDICTABLE POKER STORY EVER! Sorry to foist it on you. But that was the exact moment at which I first seriously entertained the idea of quitting poker. You would think that consistently getting a lot of chips in the pot against people with a 5-10% chance of winning the hand would be profitable, but for me, somehow, it's not. Not any more. And I hate people who bitch about their bad luck, so it really sickens me to be turning into one. But I don't know if I can help it.

Item 3: Tired of My Own Shit, I Decide to Talk About Something Else

One reason I haven't been updating the blog much lately, apart from the fact that poker is constantly dick-smacking me around the room and making me not want to write about it, is my damn iPod. I really like it... sort of. It takes a lot of time and energy just to do the basics though - load it up with music, keep the library trimmed and pruned so that there's no filler and you can hear about any genre or mood or speed of music, whenever you feel like it. I've accomplished that at last, but now I'm on to more exasperating frontiers.

For one thing, why do they have to be such little bitches and add this proprietary protection crap to files you buy from iTunes? I know technically WHY they do it, but it completely rapes my fair use. I can only authorize five computers to play purchased songs on my iPod. That's ridiculous. I already have four computers that I *want* to play these songs on - my work PC, my home PC, my girlfriend's laptop, and my laptop. If down the road some of these are replaced by newer computers (as of course, all of them eventually will be) - I won't be able to play the songs on the new computers. I'll only ever be able to play them on my iPod. (Just like with CDs - you can only play them on five CD players. That's it! ...uh, wait...)

And the silliest part to me is that they don't even let you easily transfer the files off your iPod, anyway! You can't just click a song and drag it on to your computer's iTunes library, or any other location. You can play the song if the iPod is hooked up to your computer, but basically iTunes is just being used as a docking station for the iPod. So why is this layer of "protection" being added to that? The file isn't even ON the computer, but I have to authorize the computer to allow me to listen to it?

Item 4: The Warriors is a Fun Video Game

Check it out. You can throw bricks and cinderblocks at people in the game. You can smash a bottle on someone's head, then stab them with the broken, pointy half still in your hand. You can grab someone, throw them up against a wall, punch them repeatedly in the gut, then yank them downward into a painful-looking faceplant into the pavement - all in a few button presses. Brutal melee combat has never been as easy or entertaining as in this game. Highly recommended. I knew I loved this game when one of the boss fights involved throwing bricks at a man in a wheelchair.

Item 5: No More Items

I need to eat some lunch.

What is all this shit that's going on?

Kobe Bryant scores 81 points in a non-overtime NBA game. All those people that gave up on him are now sitting around trying to reconcile this one. I'm looking at you, Bill Simmons from ESPN Page 2. Come to think of it, I'm looking at me, too. You know what? Fuck Kobe Bryant. I don't care if he finds a way to score 80 million points in one game - he's not Jordan. He'll never be the winner that guy was. Kobe's just a ridiculous athlete who would beat me fifty to zero in a game of one on one to 7 points.

The Stillers upset the Broncheals. Go Stillers! If you gotta beat my team, go on and win the whole fucking thing. And now that I said that, the Seahawks are gonna cream them... Anyway, we should have seen this coming. Jake "The Snake" has been living on borrowed time ALL YEAR. He was due for a magnificent meltdown. That performance even made Peyton's last week look good.

The Game Show Network starts airing mega-stakes cash games with a murderer's row of players (Negreanu, Greenstein, Brunson, etc.) and Danny Negs makes everyone else look like a pussy within the first 10 minutes. It helps greatly, of course, that he had cards *exactly* when he needed them, but still - that was an awesome performance. When he raised a million dollars (!!! ) with jacks after Greenstein bluff-re-raised him, Barry had this exact look on his face:

>:-(


In case you can't figure it out, that's the very ineptly drawn face of rage and pain. Emoticon-stylee.

FTR crashes! Huge thing. I lost like three blog posts, I think. For the one of you reading at home, I'm sorry. Allow me to summarize the missing content: I took some bad beats, boo hoo; jokes that aren't funny; swear words; bitching about the Colts' pathetic loss; lots of ignorable clauses and footnotes in parentheses. There you go.

MEN WHO, IT TURNS OUT, ARE VAGINAS

- Peyton Manning
- Mike Vanderjagt
- Barry Greenstein
- Jake Delhomme
- Jake Plummer (two Jakes? This can't be a coincidence. Someone should make a movie about this... let's call it... ah, forget it)
- George "W." Bush
- Tom Cruise (he can't like vaginas, but he can be one)


Our closing thought: why is it now re-en vogue to refer to wimpy, weinerish men as "pussies"? Is it because they're soft and small? And tight and wet and delicious? So warm and... I just... I gotta go to the bathroom.

Until next time!

Monday night, for a brief interlude in the middle of hours and hours of loading music on to my iPod, I played in two multi-table tournaments. Here's an overview of the three most significant hands that determined my fortunes:

1. In MTT #1, one guy in middle position min-raised, another guy called, and then I re-raised pretty big from the button with AK. The original raiser folded but the caller called again (they like to do that). The flop was ace-high and raggedy. He checked, I went all in for a little more than the pot, and he called (they like to do that). He hit a queen on the river (they like to do THAT, too). End of MTT #1 for me.

2. In MTT #2, which was running simultaneously, I got kind of tilted. A guy in middle position raised a normal amount (3xBB) and one person called. I pushed over the top of both with AQ. The original raiser called, and had AK. I flopped aces and queens, and took 2/3 of his chips. Yowza. Tilt pays off!

3. Later in MTT #2, I raised in early position with AK and got one caller. Flop was AQx, I went all in (only had a little more than the pot left) and he called with - you guessed it - AQ.

Can life dish out some rotating irony or what? Clearly AQ was the only hand worth playing on that particular night. I actually had no significant chip gains or losses that didn't involve AQ.

---

Tonight we're getting the band back together. Not an actual band, but the group of guys I play Halo with. If you're driving along in Indianapolis this evening and a spray of blood darkens your windshield, or you feel the tell-tale double thump of a corpse beneath your wheels - pay no mind. There's going to be a lot of that.

Sooooo... this weekend, I spent some Christmas money and got myself an iPod.

For those of you who own an iPod, you must have, at some point, purchased or been given that iPod. You weren't born with it velcro'd to your hip or anything. So you know already what I'm going to say next. For the rest of you, you'll have to take this on faith.

I'm about to disappear up the ass of music. I'll see you again in a few days... maybe. I own well over a thousand CDs, and even if I focus on the best CDs or even just the best songs, it's going to take me for-fucking-ever to dump that onto my precious little white and silver baby. I've been diligently working at it since I bought the thing - most of yesterday, most of today - and I have filled up approximately 1/10th of my storage capacity, and gotten through maybe 1/8th of my CD collection. This is a positively grueling amount of work, consolidating like this. I know once I get done I'll be very happy. It will be great, being able to listen to the best shit I own any time I want, anywhere I want, at the press of a button. But until then... mwah. Lots of work.

Alright, so I'll see you in a couple days. Try to hang in there. Like that cat, on that poster. You know.

End it, says I!

I have even less content for you than usual today, so instead I'm going to suggest some things you should do this weekend to fill the many grey, dreary hours between now and my next super-scintillating blog post, which will probably arrive on Monday. I know your first idea was probably "go home - kill self," but believe me, it's not that bad. Just a couple of short days and one additional evening (this one). You can make it, little fella! Big guy! Whatever.

IDEA #1 - WATCH SOME GODDAMN SPAGHETTI WESTERNS

The cursing is for added emphasis, which I feel is needed. First off, if you've never seen ANY spaghetti westerns, you're a waste of air. Get off my oxygen molecules and go drown yourself, you douche-hole. Ha! Seriously, though, start at the top. Watch some Sergio Leone. Watch "The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly" to be specific. If you don't like that one, you can just stop - meaning, you can stop reading this blog, stop logging on to the internet, stop going to work, and most importantly, stop voting. Get out of our society, you FREAK. OK, now that we've dispensed with those folks, the rest of you can move on to "For a Few Dollars More" and "Once Upon a Time in the West." After that - and a lot of you are probably already familiar with those three masterpieces - are a whole bunch of really cool, kind of weird, often atrociously dubbed, really kickass movies, often starring the likes of Lee Van Cleef and Klaus Kinski. To give you a short starter list, there's "Death Rides a Horse," "The Great Silence," "A Bullet for the General," and "Django." Availability on all of these is really sketchy, and these are just some of the more popular titles. But they're all brilliant in their way. "Death Rides a Horse" and "The Great Silence" are two of my favorite movies in any genre, and easily in my top five westerns (along with "Unforgiven" and a couple of the afore-mentioned Leone movies).

If you survive all those and really like them, you are ready to get totally freaky. Buy some drugs and a copy of "Django Kill (If You Live, Shoot! )" And if you can get it - it's a real task - "El Topo," which is not a spaghetti western at all, but is a western and will melt your brain.

IDEA #2 - ENJOY THE WONDERS OF PORN

It's time for you to start living right, Mr. Joe Jack Bobalou (or whatever your name is). I know you've occasionally been a Cinemax subscriber, and I know you have a few well-worn magazines and old VHS tapes of a certain seedy character in the bottom of your underwear drawer... but really. Let's get with the times. The world is now basically FILLED with porn, and you need to play catch-up. There's a little something out there for everyone, for every mood, and for every occasion. There's well-lit, shot-on-film, pretty-go-artsy bullshit like the works of Andrew Blake and (much better) Cameron Grant ("The Dinner Party" is a masterwork in taking a bunch of Playboy-quality models and making them get really filthy with each other). There's the usual nasty, hardcore filthburgers - tons and tons of them, and if you have satellite like me, available for the press of a button. I won't get into a litany here, because you know what you like and there's more of it than I can even describe.

And there's the internet... ah yes, our old friend. Everyone jokes about the prevalence of porn on this information superfuckway, but I don't think most people really understand what's going on here. For one quick peek, type just the word "fuck" or "pussy" or "giant ass-ramming cumcock superfuck" into Google and see what comes back. It will be eighty zillion pages (including, now, this blog). Wanna get your foot in the door for nothin'? Load up www.thehun.net. This is the Hun's Yellow Pages, and this is your access point to the world of free internet porn. Yes, most of it sucks. But remember, you've got 2.5 days to kill, buddy! Use it well. Load up a page of the Hun and start doing text finds for whatever you are into - be it "lesbian" or "blowjob" or "busty" or "mature women"... or "hung" or "guy on guy" or "brokeback" or "I am a big, gay gay guy, and making gay jokes in this day and age is not very funny, mister." To which I say, I am a weiner. Please don't hurt me. Or suck me.

Where was I? Oh yes, internet porn. After you've exhausted the Hun, and your whackin' hand, head back to Google and do a search for whatever ridiculously specific fetish you have. Click on the first five links that come up, bust out your credit card, and sign up for whatever's cheapest. If you have high-speed internet, these sites are definitely worth your while in a content-for-dollar sense. Forewarning, though: you better install AdAware or SpyBot or something like that before you even think of loading up one of these spyware-infested computer deathtraps. The porn is good and plentiful; the spyware is nasty and equally plentiful. Now you know.

(Am I giving away too much about myself? I'm just a cynical chronicler of this shit, not a willing and regular participant... I swear.