Back to Work - Pre-New Years Poker Palooza!!!

It's been a while since I have updated this thing, I am sure what little following I had has wittled away to nothing lol. But between school, traveling, and women poker has not been on my plate much lately. I was playing in the Bluff Poker Tour and doing fairly well, but my school work load got so hectic that I had to drop off of the tour (I promised my mom I would get my graduate degree, so I plan to keep it even if it delays my poker plans for a little while), but I have been playing over the at the B-House poker room as usual, so I have at least been playing a little. My online activity went almost to nil, but with all of that the semester is OVER, and it's time for me to go back to work, on my poker game.


Lately at the B-House I have had a few moments of success, but for the most part my game has dropped off a bit, I am better in some areas, but dropped off in others, maybe when I start playing more things will come back to me. But I know what my immediate problem is right now, I am not staying focused while I am playing, and this leads to board misreads, the lsat 3 or 4 times I have played I totally read the board wrong which caused me to make a bad move. So, I have to slow my game down a bit and make sure I go back to my deliberate style of play, this will help to eliminate the mistakes.

Pre-New Years Poker Palooza!!!

A poker tourney was setup by the B-House, and I was excited as it was a $20 buy-in which meant a lot of points, I am currently about 40 points behind FDR for the NB Championship, it's going to be decided on New Years anyway, but just a chance to put the pressure on him would be good. He doesn't have to place to win, so the pressure is on me for the most part, so it's going to be fun. We played a Re-buy tournament which changed the dynamic of the tourney. Early on I built up a decent chip stack, I opened about 80% of my hands with a raise, and just about everytime I raised MB would call, at this point I figured out what a clever strategy she was employing, she had a lot of chips, so by calling my raise almost everytime it was harder to put her on a hand, plus she would advertise when she bluffed which we know is only a way to entice you into second guessing yourself. Ultimately she got me on one hand with a flush and took about 1200 of my chips LOL, the funny thing is I don't think I played a lot of hands, and most of the hands I played didn't go to showdown.

I was knocked out right after the break, I was dealt 8S 7S, suited connectors and I had decent position at the time, so I raised to $300 which was only 3 times the big blind at the time. Everyone folded except THEBAT, he calls and the flop comes 9 Q 6 ok I have an open ended straght draw not bad, flsuh as barely alive at this time. So I check, THEBAT bets the minimum, I call, and the next card is a 9, but for some reason (read first paragraph) I thought I had made a straight, so I bet $625 and THEBAT calls, now I am wondering does he have a Queen, but I don't care because I have straight (so I thought), and the river comes 2d, I push all in and THEBAT calls, I flip over my cards and I say "straight" and he says "you got me", then AG goes Marksman you don't have a straight and I looked harder and I didn't have one, I only had 9 high, so THEBAT turns over his cards and he has 10 high LOL, and I get knocked out.

Now I am not a sore loser or anything, but I just had to question why someone would call all those bets with 10 high, it made no sense to me, and I was miffed then and I am miffed now. The call made no sense whatsoever, but that's poker people play the way they want to. It made me realize another thing that I haven't been doing since I started back playing, I have neglected to profile players, and if I would have just remembered a few key things, and looked at the board I could have avoided the mistake. I actually want people to make those type of calls, because they will lose more than they win with those hands, that's the good thing about Poker Baptism by fire LOL.

THEBAT ended up winning, and he got about 100 or so points for it, so it really helped him a lot, but I don't think it's enough for him to make it a 3 horse race, but it might be depending on what the point breakdown for the end of the year tourney is. I just know that if I win the tourney I win the entire thing, so that has to be my focus.

That's all for now folks, going to reload my PStars account.