PEACHFRONT SPEAKS

Recent entries july 4, 2018 - 2018-07-04 the triangle continues of courtney, boobear, & nyota - 2018-07-03 Cookie so cute telling, "Hello" to sparrows - 2018-07-01 lovebirb in love - 2018-06-30 wren with fluffffff - 2018-06-24 Read my new book, The 10 Best Things You Can Do For Your Bird at Amazon or at many other fine distributors like Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, and more. By public demand, and after a delay of an embarrassing number of years, I've finally put my notorious essay, Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman, free on the fabulous internets. A bibliography of my published books and stories. Here's a simple card-counting FAQ to get you up to speed on the basics. Here's the true story of the notorious DD' blackjack team, told for the first time on the fabulous internets. No other team went from a starting investor's bankroll of zero to winning millions of dollars. A Sadean take on Asimov's classic Three Laws of Robotics can be found in Roger Williams' NOW REVIEWED ON SLASHDOT!!! The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. Adult readers only please -- explicit sex and violence. For updates on the "Dead Tree Project" and other topics, you may visit the official fan site, Passages in the Void.. My Bird Lists -- My Louisiana State Life List, My Yard List and, tah dah, My World Life List. HEY! What happened to the Peachfront Conure Files? The world's only OFFICIAL Peachfront Conure site now features free peachfront conure coverage, including a magazine length Intro to Conures previously published in American Cage-Bird Magazine, now free on the web. I offer the best free Peachfront Conure information on the internet. If you have great Peachfront Conure info, stories, or photos to share, contact me so I can publicize your pet, your breeding success, your great photograph, etc. on my site. Thanks.

the thrilling conclusion to our adventures at the wsop event at harrah's new orleans 2010-05-19 - 9:18 p.m. Peachfront's Note: Don't forget to check out my Seattle to Whistler trip report starting right here. We only played four hours today. IMOM had a huuuuuge win, and I had a small, pea-pickin' win, and I really guess I should have played longer, but...I was on a table where there was a huuuuuuge dispute when a dumb-ass failed to protect his cards, and I didn't feel like sitting there and listening to everybody argue about it for the remainder of the evening. To make a long story short, we have a huuuuuuge all-in $2,200 pot where the man on my left, a lawyer (this turns out to be important) flips over a set of tens and he holds onto his cards. The other man swears and throws his cards into the muck. What I saw then was that one of the cards flips over, a Queen, and because no one in the Great State of Louisiana can stop himself from constant comment, the guy next to me yells out, "You just mucked the straight," and then mucker dude realizes that he just mucked the nut straight. Oopsy. Well, be a man about it and move on. We all saw you muck. Instead, he claims that it was somehow the dealer's fault and that it hit her hand and the other card somehow got flipped over, blah de blah de blah. All I know is what I saw, and I saw a guy muck his cards and then have second thoughts when he realizes that he just made a $2,200 mistake. The floor comes over, and there is only one man who still has cards. That man gets the pot. Same ruling you'd get in any poker room in the world, right? The guy who didn't protect his hand -- the guy who mucked his hand -- has already given up his right to the pot. Game over. Having lost all his money, the guy stomps off and the floor puts a new man in that seat. Fine. Let's move on. Then, about fifteen minutes later, the floor is back. Now the story is, that surveillance looked at the tape, and the guy tabled his AQ, and he is the winner of the pot. Naturally, the lawyer demands to see the tape, and then when somehow they can't produce the tape, he wants the State Police, since there is no independent gaming commission in New Orleans. I don't blame him. I'm sitting right there, and I find it hard to believe that any tape would show anything different from what we all saw -- a man who mucked his cards and then realized he'd screwed up. There are no second thoughts in poker. But now the floor is saying that the lawyer guy lost the hand, has to give up the money, and this means that all the hands we've played with this guy since then, including the hand the guy is currently involved in, he's gambling with someone else's money. The guy who's ahead in the current hand stops the action. "Look, we've got to fix this. I have to know if this guy has any money to play with." So now the game is at a dead stop. Lawyer refuses to give back the money, and I for one don't see why he should. "I want the State Police," he keeps saying. "You don't want the State Police," the floor keeps saying. "They'll arrest you if you don't give back the money." What a crock. They won't arrest him. They'll escrow the money, and it will come down to civil court, and since Lawyer is a Lawyer he won't be buffaloed. Finally, a good regular brokers a deal, since the floor doesn't have the gonads to suggest it. "Will you guys accept a split pot?" he says. "You're both wrong, so doesn't a split pot seem fair?" Well, they're not BOTH wrong. The guy who threw his cards is the guy who is wrong, but OTOH the lawyer guy who did nothing wrong didn't in fact hold the best hand at showdown. So, OK, he agrees to give the guy back half the pot, although he's still very, very angry -- who wouldn't be -- and he says, repeatedly, that he plans to look into it further. When he does, he'll be even angrier, because the first rule of poker is Protect Your Hand and you don't give money back to the guy who failed to Protect His Hand. Be that as it may, the guy seated in the mucker's seat gets up and the floor then puts the original trouble-causer back in that seat and, crikey, I'm wedged between the two of them, after a "resolution" that means that both of them are bitter. When the floor offers a free thirty minutes without a time charge, an unusual concession for Harrah's, I try to tough it out...but no. Just no. I'm in a miserable situation, and I'll just take my pea-pickin' $300 profit and get the heck out of there. I'm in no mood to listen to any more argument and discussion. OK, enough about the B.S. on my table. Let's look at a few hands. Hand #1: My Steal Equity Has to Be Through the Roof I've had a deuce or a trey in my hand for several orbits and have hardly played a hand. Most people at the table don't even know there's a living human being in my seat. I have to have the image of the tight, timid middle-aged white woman of all time. There's some limpers, the highly aggressive lojack who likes to spike the pot every time he's in makes it $15 to go, and I call with Q ♠ 9 ♥ on the button. Trust me, I'm a limit hold 'em player, I know what a shitty (excuse my French) hand that is. I also know that I'm on the button, and I have incredible steal equity on the right board. 6 players. $90 pot. My stack is if not the smallest, close to it, at $310. Flop: A ♠ 9 ♠ 5 ♥ I'm already annoyed at how many pots this dude steals from Out of Position, and I'm not very much astounded when he makes the $50 C-bet into a six player pot. I call with a plan to steal on the turn if we get it heads up. Everybody folds now that the tighty is in, and we have a $190 pot. Turn: K ♠ Aggro checks to me, and I bet $125. He folds. "Queen high spade flush," I say. "How do they know?" Hey, lying is allowed in poker, tee hee. Hand #2: How Bad Did I Screw This Up Against a Calling Station? My attorney friend to my left is a calling station. The money means nothing to him, it's true. He will call you down to keep you honest, and he isn't shy about paying off with real money. I've noticed that he isn't afraid to pay off on the turn and river, but what I should have realized is that he won't lay down pre-flop either. And so through a lamentable lack of judgment, I get involved in the following hand where I have K ♦ 9 ♦ in the small blind. Our aggro friend has raised to $20, and so far, so good. I can steal from him. But what I fail to take into account is that our Lawyer friend will defend his $5 blind. So when I make it $80 to go, he calls without batting an eye, and aggro guy folds. Pot is $180. I've put myself in a crummy situation with a no kicker hand, with a calling station, who is GOING TO RUN ME DOWN. Flop: K ♠ 2 ♣ 3 ♥ My second mistake is just as idiotic. I've flopped top pair against a calling station. Why bother if I'm not gonna make him pay me off? But instead I revert to my "standard" strategy which is to check good and bad hands alike when out of position, with the option to check-raise or to see what develops on the turn. Nah. With a calling station, you don't check. You bet, he calls, you bet, he calls. But I do check. Turn: 5 ♠ I bet $100, and he calls. Pot is $380, and since he's a station, I have no more information about his hand than I did before. River: 7 ♠ I'm not pot-committed against a player whose actions are transparent. I decide to bet/fold because if he raises me, somehow I'm beat, even though the board doesn't look very dangerous. I bet $70, he calls, and he shows down A ♦ 4 ♦ for the wheel. Whoa. Against any other player, I'd be cursing myself for not betting that flop but against him, I don't have that concern. I already know he's calling the flop if I bet...if I'd played correctly against his style, I would have actually lost more money. Thank You for small favors, Jeebus. Hand #3: A Bluff-Shove Succeeds Here I'm in a hand against a decent regular. He raises to $20, call, call, and I'm on the button with 8 ♥ 9 ♠ -- again, I've been getting so few cards that I must have a tremendously tight image at the moment. My steal equity is sky-high. My stack is $330 which my main opponent has well-covered. Five players. $100 pot. Flop: A 8 7 rainbow He C-bets $45, not even half-pot. Fold, fold. I decide to mind-game it a little with second pair and min-raise to $90. Blind folds, and now we're heads-up. He calls. Another rag falls which I don't even bother to scribble down. He checks, and I shove. He folds without further ado. Yay me. Maybe I was even bluffing with the best hand. Hand #4: How NOT To Play Pocket Jacks My opponents in this hand are the two tightest dudes at the table. One guy I have to describe as a timid, mousy, dark-skinned Mexican. (He might consider himself black rather than Mexican, I don't know, and his accent goes back and forth, but I'm really just trying to describe him to remind me myself who he is if we meet again. I certainly don't find most black or Mexican players to be weak-tight, that's an old white person failing.) The other guy is a solid old white dude who, at times, is a little bit too tight and nitty. Old White Boy limps, and I'm on the button with J ♣ T ♣ so I raise to $20. To my surprise, the mousy Mexican calls. Three players, $60 pot. My stack is about $390. Flop: 8 ♦ 7 ♥ 6 ♣ I have a gutshot to the stone-cold nuts plus position. I expect to make my money by stealing it, though, not by making the hand. Check, check, I two-thirds pot it for $40. To my surprise, they both call. $120 more in the pot for a total of a $180 pot. Turn: J ♥ Check, Tighty Whitey bets $125, and I experience a total brain fart and ask for time. $305 pot and I'm getting close to three to one to call with my top pair/straight re-draw. Considering how tight the guy is, I can let it go right there. My four-outer is not getting proper express odds or implied odds to call. But I somehow convince myself that my top pair/no kicker has some tiny value. Insane. If I pair my kicker, I give someone else a straight, and I might only be playing to a split pot if I MAKE my straight. This is a CLEAR fold against this non-tricky, timid player-- especially with a third man to act behind me. But I convince myself that he knows that the mouse behind me is never calling, and it's all a big mind game to steal the pot. Ridiculous. I'm thinking on a level which never occurred to this guy. So I play horrible and call. River: 9 ♦ God has better things to do today than punish my shitty poker play. My straight has come in. He bets $50 and I shove all-in, $150 or so more to him, which he has to call with his set of Jacks. Yay me. I'm the goose of the game today, but I still eked out a win. Nonetheless, considering these plays in the cold light of the morning, I think my best decision of the night was to simply get up and leave. For some reason, I wasn't playing up to par. back - next All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2002-2017 by Elaine Radford