Snow Blind

Brag:
Flopped two sets this morning.

Beat:
Lost both with me having an underset

Variance:
I’ve flopped 10 sets so far this month and these were the first 2 I lost, but since they were big pots, I’m only up $15 on flopped set hands for the month

The hands:
PokerStars Game #16021733628: Hold’em No Limit ($0.50/$1.00) – 2008/03/16 – 13:39:35 (ET)
Table ‘Nihal’ 6-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: Larivor ($60.80 in chips)
Seat 2: Draxxxxxx ($347.80 in chips)
Seat 3: ran77 ($114.20 in chips)
Seat 4: MaAnthony ($106.55 in chips)
Seat 5: Brutefamine ($108.25 in chips)
Seat 6: The Force 20 ($39.70 in chips)
MaAnthony: posts small blind $0.50
Brutefamine: posts big blind $1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to MaAnthony [2♣ 2♠]
The Force 20: folds
Larivor: folds
Draxxxxxx: calls $1
ran77: raises $4 to $5
MaAnthony: calls $4.50
The Force 20 said, “draxx you had reraised 22″
Brutefamine: calls $4
The Force 20 said, “???”
Draxxxxxx: calls $4
*** FLOP *** [2♦ T♦ 7♠]
MaAnthony: checks
Brutefamine: bets $11
Draxxxxxx: folds
ran77: raises $18 to $29
MaAnthony: raises $72.55 to $101.55 and is all-in
Brutefamine: raises $1.70 to $103.25 and is all-in
ran77: folds
*** TURN *** [2♦ T♦ 7♠] [6♥]
*** RIVER *** [2♦ T♦ 7♠ 6♥] [T♥]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
MaAnthony: shows [2♣ 2♠] (a full house, Deuces full of Tens)
Brutefamine: shows [7♥ 7♣] (a full house, Sevens full of Tens)
Brutefamine collected $249.10 from pot

It was mildly amusing that they were having a conversation about deuces while I was busy trying to lose a stack with them.

PokerStars Game #16021509128: Hold’em No Limit ($0.50/$1.00) – 2008/03/16 – 13:30:09 (ET)
Table ‘Kuiper II’ 6-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: Brutefamine ($100.90 in chips)
Seat 2: Arne1966 ($33.60 in chips)
Seat 3: Thulsadoon ($58 in chips)
Seat 4: MaAnthony ($100 in chips)
Seat 5: Stutzi57 ($40.75 in chips)
Seat 6: mkgringo ($96.35 in chips)
Thulsadoon: posts small blind $0.50
MaAnthony: posts big blind $1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to MaAnthony [T♥ T♦]
Stutzi57: folds
mkgringo: folds
Brutefamine: raises $3 to $4
Arne1966: folds
Thulsadoon: folds
MaAnthony: calls $3
*** FLOP *** [T♠ 9♥ J♦]
MaAnthony: checks
Brutefamine: bets $4
MaAnthony: raises $10 to $14
Brutefamine: calls $10
*** TURN *** [T♠ 9♥ J♦] [4♥]
MaAnthony: bets $25
Brutefamine: calls $25
*** RIVER *** [T♠ 9♥ J♦ 4♥] [Q♦]
MaAnthony: checks
Brutefamine: checks
*** SHOW DOWN ***
MaAnthony: shows [T♥ T♦] (three of a kind, Tens)
Brutefamine: shows [J♠ J♥] (three of a kind, Jacks)
Brutefamine collected $83.50 from pot

I somehow managed to NOT lose a stack here by some stroke of luck. I sure as hell know I was prepared to. At least through the turn, no act of god was gonna keep me from getting every last chip of mine into the pot. The poker gods took pity on me and spared me with the scariest of scare river cards. I almost fired the last shot in on that river too, but thought, I would be better off calling a bluff since I was SO sure, I was ahead before then.

This month has been a roller coaster all month and for some reason, I just haven’t been able to get it back into the black. Probably gonna be the first month I lost money where I put in any reasonable amount of hands in well over a year if I don’t find a way to set the course straight again. What sacrificial animals do the poker gods take again anyway? I should just keep live chickens on hand.

Brag:
Profit for the month was $510.67.

Beat:
$518 of that was from me selling W$’s and Rakeback.

Variance:
I’m enjoying the game again and not worried to much about results. I think me playing a lot of omaha recently has a good deal to do with that. That also has a lot to do with my shaky results though.

I was profitable at my trackable hands though winning a whole $12.85 over 607 hands for a winrate of .72 ptbb. Not spectacular, but I was a bit rusty and it really wasn’t enough hands to make a good assessment anyway. I’m pretty sure I was up playing omaha at cake too, but I don’t track my hands there. I also made a reasonable amount playing omaha sngs there too, but lost at least as much as I won, since I only played 3 and cashed in 2, in a $5 omaha rebuy at stars.

I lost some money playing a few hands of the nlhe. $66.85 over 502 of trackable hands. Again, not really enough to get my panties in a bunch about, but it still didn’t help.

Actually, my biggest detriment to my game this month, was again time. I spent a week without a computer, had a lot of other stuff going on and ended up playing a lot of 1 or 2 tables. I only had about another 500 hands at cake in miscellaneous games. I slummed it at the $20nl for a few hands with Zooks and played some plo, plo8 and nlo8 as well as some other $100nl. Oh yeah, this just in, I have enough at cake to play the 100s too.

So that breaks down my month and here are the totals.

stars $1,398.18
ftp $676.33
cake $1492.14
Total BR: $3566.65

Another 400 or 500 more and I can play the 100s at all the sites regularly. I’ve been short stacking the FR games there lately anyway, but it would be nice to have some more room for comfort. The boost at cake mostly came from a friend who wanted some money on stars so I boosted my Cake BR a bit. I’m looking forward to having some more room to play with there. I’ve also decided to play the freerolls on full tilt that my RB affiliate is holding, so I will be playing more at ftp again, but it will likely only be at the omaha tables. Here’s to me running up my BR to close out the year. GL me.

Update: Due to a case of me totally spacing out my $20 that I put into the pool for the BTP fantasy football league, I actually DID make money for september. Yay me.

Brag:

My weekend stats were as follows

hands: 1479

profit: $491

winrate: fucking-big-ass-number ptbb/100 (roughly equates to16.6)

Beat:

I didn’t get enough hands in to clear my bonus, but I made a decent run to at least keep it alive.

Variance:

I won, as far as I can tell, all but 1 hand where my opponent showed down AA. I won my last 28 AA hands in a row. When the odds numbers decide to adjust themselves, my ass is gonna seriously hurt. The poker version of butt darts, and I will be the recipient.

Brag: We got the aquarium setup.

Beat: Less than 24 hours after being introduced to the tank, we’ve had a casualty. One of the 4 Zebra Danios we bought for the tank didn’t make it past day 1.

Variance: The tank is testing fine with the testing strips, so we think the tank could be fine and just a coincidence. We did get the fish from petsmart and large chain pet stores aren’t renowned for their healthy fish. They aren’t any where close to Wal-Mart infamy with poor pet quality, but they aren’t exactly marine biologists working there either.

We setup the tank and had just let everything run for the last week but since we were going to be away for the weekend, we didn’t want to get fish that would be ignored for 3 days right off the bat. We picked up the fish and some plants to get the aquarium cycling process going. I still need to fix the fluorescent light fixture for the aquarium. The switch was worn out and I’m far deeper into learning about how fluorescent lights work than I ever wanted to.

With any hope, we will get the aquarium balanced over the next few months. I’ve always liked fish and there are studies showing how aquariums can help relieve stress. Some crap about the water movement is supposed to be relaxing. But I think the kids will enjoy it and it adds more character to our living room.

Beat:
Not sure what the actual high will be for today, but the highest I saw from occasional peeks at intellicast was -4. We have had a pretty brisk cold spell over the last week.

Brag:
Tomorrow is forecast to be 16 with it getting to the 30′s after that. After this week, that’s pretty much t-shirt weather. Time to break out the lawn furniture and invite the neighbors over.

Variance:
It’s still February and there is a decent chance we haven’t seen the last of ball freezing weather.

Let’s play a bit of Brag, Beat and Variance.

Brag:
I was searching for ‘hitchhiker’ on flickr and the first result was this.

Beat:
I was at work.

Variance:
I closed it right away, work doesn’t do any web access monitoring and no one saw it on my screen – so it’s pretty much like it didn’t happen.