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.

my day to make straights 2010-05-19 - 10:33 a.m. For a short while, late in the evening, I played with one of the donkeys from the huge donkey fest the other night but he was sober and not playing the same way. In fact, from his comments to me, it seemed like he didn't even remember playing with me, and I wondered if he'd been playing in black-out. Poker definitely doesn't mix with Long Island Ice Tea, guys. Wheel spinning. I won a couple hundred but I would have won more if I'd just racked up and left after my first big hand. Oh well. That first hand in question was the mighty 93 of offsuit in the big blind. Since it was a limped pot, I bet out on the 953 flop and get one caller. The turn is another 9, and I double up thanks to my opponent's pocket fives. So I start strong and then gradually get half my stack eaten away before I pick up AK, which is stacked by AA. Not really anything interesting to say about that. I re-buy and after awhile I pick up the following hands. Hand #1: Pocket Tens Against An Illogical Bluffer The guy to my immediate right is a large, well-to-do middle-aged black guy who tries to observe the game and pick up player tendencies/moves but who doesn't seem to have actually read a book. That is, he's a guy who has no clue how to play a short stack, although he keeps buying in short, but he knows how to steal a series of limps from the small blind with a hand like Q ♠ 8 ♠. Because he consistently plays hands much too weak for the size of his stack and then carries too many bluffs way too far, putting too much money in the pot when he misses, I would like to play this guy heads-up. Five limpers. He's in the small blind. He raise to $30. There is now $60 in the pot, including my big blind. I look down to see two black Tens. My plan is simple: I would like to chase out the limpers and keep in Mr. Bluffy. I have $300 in front, about what he has. So I raise to $100. Everybody folds, including the target, and I take the $60. I wrote down this simple hand because of the bet-sizing. IMOM pointed out that I seemed to bet a little less when I wanted a caller. From the blinds, I usually try to bet at least 4x, in order to pick up a little extra money to compensate me those times I have to play out of position. Here, I bet only 3x, and maybe the slightly smaller bet was enough to suggest that I was trying to suck him in? In all honesty, I don't think he would have noticed much difference between a $120 three-bet and the $90 three-bet, but I mainly wrote it down to remind myself to stop sending signals about the strength of my hand with any type of a simple bet-sizing pattern. If I'm three-betting to $120 with no hand, I've got to three-bet to $120 when I do have a hand. Hand #2: When Crime Pays Here's a hand where I started with a simple plan to steal and backed into an actual hand. My primary opponent was a new player who had just table changed to our table. He was also a middle-aged black man, extremely well-dressed, sunglasses, expensive jewelry. My experience with guys in that category is that they have a lot of poker-player experience and, frequently, they pride themselves on their hand-reading and their ability to make or sniff out bluffs. Some of the other players at the table were asking him about his tournament results, so I could be pretty sure that he wasn't just some tourist who stumbled into the poker room. But, really, I'd had time to observe almost nothing about him so far. A somewhat tight, readable old white guy makes it $20 to go from an early position, the villain calls, and it folds to me on the button, where I look down at 7 ♣ 6 ♥ -- I can read and pick when to steal from the white guy, and I'm willing to gamble that I can use the power of position plus the image of "unknown white lady equals tight" to steal from the black guy. So I call the $20. Blinds fold, and there is $65 in the pot. Flop: K ♥ 4 ♥ 3 ♣ I have picked up a well-concealed gutshot with three clean outs to the nuts. Interesting. First guy checks, and villain half-pots it with a $30 bet. With the heart draw on board and, at that time, not knowing how frequently this villain likes to toss $20 or $30 flop bets at any show of weakness, I'm not impressed by his bet. He could have a King, a pair, a flush draw, or nothing at all, and he's just looking to pick up a pot from two older tight white folks. However, his nothing is probably better than my nothing, which is a mere 7 high at the moment. There is $95 in the pot. Perfect. I raise to $90. First guy folds, villain calls. So much for the theory that he held nothing. Pot is now $255. Turn: 5 ♠ My hidden hand has come in, and that sweet l'il ole Five out there just isn't much of a scare card. He checks to me, and now all I can do is pray that he has a hand that can pay me off. The pot is bigger than my remaining stack, since I only have about $200 left, so I push. He calls. River: J ♣ Yay me. Hand #3: You Can't Always Get Paid When You Flop the Nuts At this time, there have been a lot of multi-way flops, with five or six players to the flop. I don't suggest that anyone play 7 ♦ 5 ♦ out of position, but I still had the guy to my right, with whom I wanted to play a lot of pots, and when he limps UTG, I decide what the hell and limp myself. I'm punished instantly, because the tight middle-aged Asian man to my immediate left then raises to $30. Well, with a raise from a player that tight, I guess everybody figures they can read him, because it scares everybody in, and when the action gets back to me, it's already a 5 player pot, so I toss in the extra $25. 6 players. $150 in the pot. And away we goooooo.... Flop: 8 ♠ 6 ♣ 4 ♥ I have to blink at that one a couple of times. I have flopped the nuts, and you don't, but I have the worst possible position. If I bet, the pre-flop raiser can raise right there and knock out my remaining opponents. I decide to check and gamble that he, or somebody from a later position, will wake up with a hand that they can bet with. So check to the pre-flop raiser, and he makes it a little more than half-pot with his $80 C-bet. A decent younger Asian man calls the $80. Heck, one of these guys has to have a hand, right? When it folds back to me, I decide to make a min-check/raise to $160. This puts $470 in the pot and it's only $80 more to these guys. With pot odds like that, seems like they'd have to call with most half-decent hands and maybe my little show of weakness even invites them to three-bet me? Ha. Nobody accepts the invitation. As IMOM warned me, when I "invite" them to come in, a good player knows what it means, and they're not falling for it. Fold, fold. I win, but I'm left wondering if I'd instead raised to pot or even shoved my whole stack, if I would have looked "bluffier" and earned a call. I guess we'll never know. Hand #4: No, Seriously, You Can't Always Get Paid When You Flop the Nuts Here, we're playing a little short at the time, and the tightest player at the table happens to be in the big blind. I'm in the cut-off, and I open-raise to $15 with K ♠ T ♠ -- it folds to the tighty whitey and he calls. An unimpressive $30 pot. Flop: A ♠ Q ♠ J ♦ I has flopped the nuts on the action-killing flop of all action killing flops of all time, and I figure to have almost zero chance of getting any money out of the tighty. He checks to me and I check, hoping to induce. Turn: 3 ♣ Oh FFS. He checks to me, and I could just end the misery right there, but can even he resist taking a stab if I check in position twice? I check again. River: 2 ♣ He still checks, and I realize that I have approximately zero chance of getting a dime out of this guy, but I pot it. After I've bet only after being checked to THREE times, maybe he can call down for a mere $25? Nope, he folds. I could have bet the flop and saved a lot of time right there. Hand #5: I Can't Hit A Straight Every Time My final big hand wasn't very deep, but it just goes to show you that some of the short stackers in play have no idea of how to play a short stack. They don't know when they're pot-committed, which can be both good and bad. Many of them just dribble their money away, in little dribs and drabs, because they don't realize that a short stack has to forget about the implied odds hands like middle suited connectors and small pocket pairs. They just look at any and all flops, hoping for I know not what. In this case, a bad short stacker with about $250 or so in front opened for $25 from an early position and he gets plenty of callers. I'm fairly new to the table, because our previous table broke. So...I'm in the small blind with 8 ♣ 7 ♣ and I join the party. Big blind folds, I think so it's 6 players, $155 in the pot. Flop: Q ♣ 7 ♦ 7 ♥ I check, and the shorty makes the half-pot $80 C-bet. He's put over $100 of his money in the pot already, and I have to assume that he's committed. So when it folds to me, I go ahead and check/raise enough to put him all-in for his remaining money. It seems like an easy decision to me. A sane player couldn't be stealing with a pre-flop open-raise from early position with a short stack, so he has to have some kind of a hand that's worth continuing with. Why not an overpair or an AQ? But he folds and, minutes later, after he leaves the table, the people who have been at that table longer assure me that they would have known better and that he never has it and that they would have allowed him to continue bluffing off his money. OK, whatever, peeps. I just don't assume that a shorty in early position who open-raises pre-flop has eff-all nothing in his hand. He never has AA, KK, JJ, TT, or 99 here? Really? back - next All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2002-2017 by Elaine Radford