Saturday Night Redux

One thing I forgot to mention about Saturday night was that it's getting more difficult to play the 'oh I'm just a girl' card these days.

... especially when I sit down at a table and not one, but TWO of the floor managers make a beeline for my table as soon as I sit down and start chatting me up. After they'd gone back to doing poker room things, the guy next to me inquired, "So, uh, do you come here a lot then?"

I told him, "It's more like I used to be here all the time. I've only been here once a week or so these days, which is why they're making a point to say hi." And it's pretty much true.

However I think it's fishing season, at least until about May, when everyone's spent their tax refunds.

Saturday Night Poker

I got a call from Mark on Friday night asking if he and the other big game players were ever going to see me again and that there were TWENTY SIX (26) people playing the $1000 min no max game and approximately 20 of them were absolutely horrible. Unfortunately I had to be somewhere at 9 am Saturday morning and I (barely) resisted the siren call.

So, Saturday after attending my morning commitments, I ran home and debated between grocery shopping and going to the boats to play some poker. Guess what won?

The must move table was, as usual, a nice soft table, and I didn't want to leave. I'd doubled up plus some there with some pretty weak calls on my opponent's part, and then managed to give that profit back when they moved me to a main game. I took one look at the table with too many regulars for my liking, looked at the other five games going and saw one that was pleasantly filled with two women with lots of chips^[1], and one of the guys from my original must-move table who was awful and also had a bunch of chips. Hello, table change!

Nick the poker manager comes up to me at one point and informs me that the big game is probably going to go tonight and do I want a seat on that list? No thanks, but I do check out the list and see that Mark, Stan and Jimmy are on it - not the lineup I'm looking for.

I sit down at this table and watch one of the women call off $200 on a gutshot straight draw that hits, and observe the guy from the must-move call off $230 preflop with AKo, and I fell in love with the table. I end up felted when I cannot get one of the ladies to lay down her JJ on a flop of 544 when it's obvious that she no longer likes my hand. The turn comes down another 5 and I bet pot into her; she thinks for a long while and then raises another $150 all in. I truly think that I have the best hand - that she has AK and thinks her A is good because she is so obvious that she doesn't like her hand. Oh well, I did play the hand well - the only thing I could have done better was raise her $25 (into a $40 pot) flop bet to $125 instead of $75.

I get up and take the open 10 seat, which is to the left of the ladies with the chips, as one truism in poker play is that the money always moves to the left - I want to be able to act after these women rather than before them. About 20 min after taking the seat, I feel someone tickling the back of my neck, I turn around and who is it but Lawyer Mark? He tells me he's gotten all the big game players to rearrange their schedules to play on Saturdays because I said I was going to be here on Saturday and not Fridays. I tell him I don't believe him for a minute, but it is a very sweet thing to say^[1]. He sure does know the way to warm this girl's heart though! :)

Eventually I run my second $200 up to about $775, when the women rack their (way too many) chips up and leave, and the pickings at the table get much more slim, so I take a look around and there's a MUCH fishier table behind me. I move to that table, and proceed to go the worse kind of card dead I've ever seen for 45 minutes - to the point where everyone at the table is asking me if I've played a hand yet? I get AQ, raise for the first time in 45 min and still get callers, and the very next hand I get TT on the button, raise again to $30 and STILL get two callers, plus one person staying in for $60 on a Jd jh 5d flop for his diamond draw. YEEESH. Luckily the turn isn't a diamond, and my next bet takes the pot down. I proceed to go back to being card dead, and when I rack up at about 12:30 am (as again I have to be up and somewhere at merely 9:30 am this time), I've made a whole $75 profit at the table.

But more importantly, I was aggressive and played well.
--
^[1] Not that women with chips is a bad thing, but stereotypes and generalities are in place because they ARE generally true - women are either rocks who play only top ten hands, or they're maniacs who play a lot of hands and play them poorly post-flop. There are exceptions, but not enough to change the generality in my mind (yet).

^[2] As of this writing, I think it's about 60% true, though, and 40% for a chance at more money from the big boys.

The state of the poker

I haven't been updating much, as I've been rather "blah" on poker for the last few weeks. I've been playing a little bit here and there - mostly the Marshmallow Peep Sex tournaments on FTP, and then a few $10,500 and $16,000 guarantees when I have the tokens, but I have not had the successes that facty or gracie or even Joe Speaker have had in these.

I've also been playing in the Turbo PLO8 (yes you read that right) tournies on stars, and I am not having nearly the success rate that Drizz has, which could be explained by the fact that O8 is his game and not mine, but it's discouraging nonetheless. This is not helping my bankroll any at all.

I've also been watching helixx crush the SnGs on Party and Full Tilt, and while he'll tell you he's not crushing them because he's not winning, I'll tell you a 10 out of 12 ITM rate is 'crushing' to me. And I'm envious because I do not have that win rate - I am not nearly as good as he is in the SnG realm.

Which leaves live play, and the weather has been sucking, so I haven't been playing much there, either. I've made the decision that playing on Friday night is generally -EV for me - the games are too wild and crazy, the $400 game doesn't open because the $1000 min game generally goes instead - so I went and played on Saturday night instead. I was at the fishiest table ever, and I should have left when I was a $1300 winner, instead of with the $700 profit I did leave with - the $1300 would have helped the bankroll quite a bit, and when I was up about that much, the sharks saw my fish and started invading my table. That should have been my cue to leave, but I didn't, because it was 'too early' to go home.

I really need to work on willpower and leaving when the niggling intuition tells me to leave, instead of by my watch and my desire to keep playing.

I hear that's called 'stoploss', huh? Plus, there's always a game online to play if I want to go that route, too.

Ode to April.

Seriously, I am so lucky to have a friend like April. Not only did she set up a HORSE tourney for me (I placed 8th, she bubbled in 9th, which was a good showing!), but when I realized that there was only 30 minutes until the HORSE tourney and I really wanted to DDR instead of finish the silly Marshmallow Peep Sex(MPS) tourney I'd entered in a fit of insanity/boredom, she offered to finish the tourney for me.

So she logged in, and full tilt flipped it to her in the middle of a hand which she FOLDED and I would have CALLED, but she came back from T380 (and a bit of my ire, sorry april) to win a token! And not only that, she managed to win me T300 in the HORSE tourney since that started before the MPS tourney finished - she got me my token at the expense of a bit of time in her tourney.

Also, she got quad aces as me. We rule.

So, to April, I say, MWAH! You are the definition of a true friend.

Turbooooo gamboooooool

I think Drizz is right about the Stars PLO8 turbo tourneys – if I can consistently cash and even win in these things, they must be soft!

$3.40: 3/5 or so
$15+1: 1of 2 but the 1 was a big ol’ win. Chaching.

Pokerstars FT replay

$500,000 Guaranteed Final Table Replay
By Brad "Otis" Willis
Want to see how PokerStars players win the big money? Tuesday and Wednesday, PokerStars will replay the final table of the January 8th $500,000 Guaranteed final table with most of the hole cards face-up! Now you can watch the big money PokerStars tournament just like it's on TV. The January 8 event will replay January 17-18 from 12pm-8pm ET. Click on Tourney/Special to watch today.

Weird. I'm watching now, and it is really very cool to see the number of bluffs, espeically short-handed, but I can't help but wonder: if I made the final table, would I want to have all my hole cards shown?

... still, it's pretty dang interesting

HORSEing around

Just in case you haven’t seen it, April absolutely rules and has set up a HORSE tournament this FRIDAY (1/20/2006) at Full Tilt Poker.  Come join in on the fun!

What: WPBT HORSE Tournament #2482794 (Look under Private tab or just do a find player for ‘maigrey’ and it’ll come up)
Where: Full Tilt Poker
When: Friday, Jan. 20th at 10pm EST (or 22:00)
Buy-in: $10 + 1
Format: H.O.R.S.E.
Password: princess

Hurry up and hit it while it’s hot!

Hey by the way, if you haven't been getting any gracie posts in a while, that's because she changed her feeds. Go to bloglines and pick up the new feed: http://www.sheverb.com/wp-rss2.php :)

2006 begins with a junk kicking

An interesting site that I was directed to by poker_snobs: Is Online Poker Safe. I haven't read anything there but it seems interesting.

It looks like 2006 will be filled with overcoming junk-kicking, if yesterday was any indication. I got knocked out of the big HORSE tourney in 90 minutes thanks to misplaying one hand, though my railbirds said I played the tourney well. Then I proceeded to drop a couple buyins at various sites playing kiddie poker by getting rivered like the nile is in style. OOF.

But that's all part of the maturing process. Here's a question I have: For those of you with multiple computers, how do you use poker tracker? Do you share databases somehow? I may have gotten my file sharing working at home so that may start to be an option - map the tower to a drive on the laptop. Anyway, just curious how all you geeks manage it.

Also, seriously, if you haven't gotten gizmo, do so. It's probably one of the funniest things to listen to people play poker online. srsly.

More fun with Phil Gordon

NB: This is funnier if you've read Roshambo Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and the Appendix...

From the holidays when drizz and I caught Phil playing PLO8:

maigrey (Observer): hey phil want to roshambo so i can buy some bras?
Phil Gordon: yes
Dealer: MrGa23 has 15 seconds left to act
Phil Gordon: 1
Phil Gordon: 2
Phil Gordon: 3
Phil Gordon: paper
Dealer: MrGa23 has 15 seconds left to act
HitmanHoldem (Observer): scissors
maigrey (Observer): scissors!
HitmanHoldem (Observer): lol
maigrey (Observer): woooo bras for ME
Phil Gordon: yeah, right

Also, I'll be playing in the $200+16 HORSE event at 8:30 CST on Full Tilt Poker ^[1]; feel free to railbird me, but I warn you I'm not playing much during the first rounds of HO. (I'm not that easy)

^[1]Thanks to the generosity and faith of some really cool bloggers and the best poker cartoonist ever who are backing me into the event - what a ego boost!