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the triangle continues of courtney, boobear, & nyota - 2018-07-03
Cookie so cute telling, "Hello" to sparrows - 2018-07-01
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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.
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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.
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A bibliography of my published books and stories.
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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. |
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| 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.. |
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My Bird Lists -- My Louisiana State Life List, My Yard List and, tah dah, My World Life List.
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| 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.
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vegas jan 2011 trip report part 6: sometimes you catch the rabbit, sometimes the rabbit catches you
2011-01-20 - 1:31 p.m.
Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2011
A trivial loss at 2/5 NL. Mostly card-dead. There seemed to be a lot of pre-flop
activity, lots of three-betting and four-betting, but mostly it seemed to be
because everyone except me was picking up big hands. No sets, and I was forced to
contribute a ton of money to the biggest pot of the day, in which I flopped overwhelming
equity, the nut flush draw, the blocker to the straight flush, a gut-shot, and an Ace overcard.
After I saw the winner's hand, an offsuit 74, which turned two pair, I realized that my monster
draw was even more of a monster than I thought -- any Ace, any 6, any 2, any spade gives
me the pot. However, I somehow missed hitting any of these fine cards on the turn or
the river. So it goes.
Much of the day, I was just getting dribbled away. However, during my second session, I had
the good luck to pick up Aces versus Kings and get it all-in for my entire $410 stack, so I caught a nice
double-up to keep me going. My opponent immediately to my left seemed to be a pretty
standard TAG young black guy. He was playing at the same table as the nitty young black regular but
I don't know if they're friends or if they discuss strategy. He opens for $20 from an early position.
I'm next to act, and I hate to blow everybody out of the water when I hold Aces, but I'd like to
get the action started, and they've seen a lot of three-betting (and, sadly, a lot of folding to four-betting)
out of me, so I make it $60 to go. It folds back to the kid, and he smooth-calls.
He doesn't call a lot of three-bets, so I put him on a pretty good pocket pair that
wants to see a flop.
So we get 6 ♣ 6 ♦ 7 ♦ -- isn't that a beautiful flop for Aces? At least I
hold the A ♦. With $120 in the pot, and $350 remaining behind, I decide that I'm pot-committed.
I make the C-bet, he raises, and now I shove. He calls. I turn over my Aces, and he shows me his Kings
with a sigh of disgust.
Dinner at Noodle Asia. For some reason, we had forgotten about the BBQ Pork and Roast Duck Soup, but
I'd seen someone eating it, and we made sure to include some with today's dinner. Delicious.
Let's just say that I wasn't feeling at my physical peak this evening, and I decided that I would
order an adult beverage before I left the V. There was no pomegranate juice, so I couldn't get a foofy
Pomegranate Martini. I decided that the best drink for medicinal purposes was a Maker's Mark, neat.
After not drinking a drop since I landed in Vegas, I could really savor the flavors.
Slept pretty hard for 9-1/2 hours but I still had plenty of weird dreams. There was a sinkhole
in Florida in one of them. You could see it from a satellite in outer space. Of course, these days, anyone
with Google maps can see a kid's volleyball on a lawn from a satellite in outer space. I mean, I suppose,
that it was big enough to be seen from outer space by John Glenn in 1964. Bigger than the Great
Wall of China. Not bigger than Katrina, though.
More of that feeling that the trip is too long. I think it's because I've done nothing but exercise, blog,
poker review, play a full day, go to sleep and fight the wars in these highly colorful dreams, and then back on the hamster wheel again.
We're going to some lunch today, a regular round-up of undesirables from the old blackjack team days, and
then we've had some discussion of taking the rest of the day off. I guess I'll see whether or not there's
any drinking involved at the lunch before I decide about that.
A couple of hand histories.
Hand #1: A Stupid Attempt to Induce a Bluff
This hand is not played in a standard manner. The main character is a Slavic guy with a thousand-dollar man-bag who
often plays 5/T. I haven't played much against him, but I'd noticed him on the previous day because I'd been
on a must-move with the IMOM to observe the two of them play a hand heads-up. I won't belabor the hand I observed,
but IMOM made what I felt was a terrible call-down unless he had some previous history with the guy. I noticed
a couple of other wild call-downs made against the guy as well, so I shrugged and concluded that he was a known blufftard.
Well, on this table, I was three seats down from Man-bag, and I myself was card-dead, so I had plenty of time
to observe his play. I concluded that he wasn't a thinking player on any high level. He's just a guy with more
money than sense, who has played a lot of poker because he can afford to. He may have played in a lot of tournament
poker at one time, or maybe he just learned his game on TV, because he does seem to know how to make a few
pre-flop squeezes and steals. But his post-flop game is just terrible. He's erratic and illogical, and he takes an
all-in shove from certain players to mean a challenge to his manhood, so that he'll call down with pretty much nothing.
In other words, you want to pick up a hand against this player, have it stand up, and have it get called.
Alas for me, I wasn't picking up squat.
I've been folding for about 90 minutes. My image must be that I'm the classic middle-aged white lady waiting
to pick up Aces. Now I'm under-the-gun and instead I pick up A ♥ J ♣. I usually fold this hand
UTG at a full ring game, but I'm sick of folding, and I decide to limp in and see what develops. An 83 year old calls, Moody calls, unknown
middle-aged "decent" white guy raises to $20 on the button, Man-bag calls in the small blind, big blind folds.
83 and Moody are both capable of limping in with hands as strong as QQ and AK, but I'm not going to worry
about them just yet. I have a perfect opportunity for a squeeze and the perfect image to pull it off with
nothing.
I three-bet to $80.
All fold back to Man-bag. He looks at his hand and says to me, "Aces no good." In American English, he
means that he "knows" I have pocket Aces, but he's going to see a flop with his Ace-cracker hand (a small pocket
pair or a suited gapper) and see what develops. Having put in $20, he isn't going to fold for a pitiful $60 more, in
other words.
Fine. We're heads-up. $195 pot. I have gone from being under-the-gun to the effective button.
Flop: A ♠ 3 ♣ 7 ♣
Man-bag almost can't have hit this flop, unless he happens to hold two clubs. If I bet now, he folds, because
he thinks my hand has improved to top set. I hate to give a free card to clubs, but it's heads-up, and sometimes
I'll take a little risk to get some more money in the pot. When he checks, I check behind.
Turn: 3 ♠
In his mind, I've improved to Aces full of threes. Sigh. At this point, I should just give up and bet, putting
the hand to a merciful end. However, when he checks, I check behind again, hoping against hope that a
second sign of weakness means that he'll take a stab at the end. Also, I'm just curious to see if he
ever bluff-bets here after a double check. I don't think he does. I've pretty much already decided that the
other players, who considered him to be aggressive or some kind of multi-level thinker, were just plain wrong.
But maybe he'll surprise me.
River: Q ♠
He checks, and I bet $100, now just hoping that if I give him 3 to 1, then he'll call just to see my hand. But, of course, he
thinks he already knows my hand -- Aces full of threes -- so he doesn't bother. He rolls his eyes and folds. Game
over. I could have made the same money with less risk on the flop.
Hand #2: Humor Hand of the Day
I don't think I played this hand particularly well, because I was really having some physical pain at the time, but
it's worth a giggle, so I'll record it here for the entertainment value.
Effective stacks for this hand are $280 or so, the size of the main opponent's smallish stack. We'll
call him Victim.
Victim open-limps from the hijack. Cut-off folds, I look down at 3 ♥ 2 ♥ and I over-limp. I won't
defend over-limping here with one guy in. The play is to either fold or raise to get it heads-up and put
some moves on him post-flop. But I decide that I just want to see a cheap flop here. Small blind completes,
big blind checks. 4 players. $20 pot.
Flop: A ♦ K ♥ 2 ♦ Blinds check.
Victim bets $15. Sorry, Charlie, you had a chance to rep an Ace in your hand when you limped in on the hijack.
It's possible that a middle-aged white guy with a shortstack holds something like A9 here, but I'm going to need
more evidence than one bet and a scary-looking board. I raise to $45. The blinds fold without any fuss.
To my surprise, Victim calls. At that point, I know I'm beat. I'm done, I'm toast, stick a fork in me.
I don't plan to put any more money into this pot unless a miracle occurs.
Turn: 7 ♠
He checks, and I check.
River: 2 ♣
He bets $50. I should have raised it right here and gotten the rest of his stack in, but I dropped
the ball and just smooth-called. He shows down AK, and of course, my trips with no kicker is good.
So, a hand I played just horribly on every street except the turn. In fact, I just realized that if I'd
raised that river and gotten his stack in, I would have come out ahead a small winner for the day instead
of a small loser. Arghhhh, stupid-ass cramps.
Wait, on third thought, if I'd played it correctly, by trying to punish his limp before the flop with a
raise, and he comes back with a three-bet pre-flop, I'm not in the hand at all, and I'm down
$25 more dollars. So whatever. Poker is an exchange of mistakes, and we all make some.
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All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2002-2017 by Elaine Radford
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