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.

vegas jan 2011 trip report part 4: i catch the rabbit 2011-01-17 - 1:08 p.m. A decent-sized winning day. IMOM also had a good win, so it was another great day for the team. A bit stressful for me, though. The day was already off to a shaky start when I realized that one of the dresses I'd pulled out of the back of the closet had a hole in it. I guess I'll be tossing that one. On my first table, I had a bad loose player who called all-ins very light. However, while I was getting settled in, I got stacked twice. Hand #1: Can Anything Good Come from Flopping Two Pair? At the time, I felt as if I actually should have won this pot, but a screw-up by another player allowed the third guy to stick around and draw out on both of us. I held T ♣ 8 ♦ in the big blind. The really loose guy limps, another guy limps, the button makes it $15 to go, I go ahead and call, and the limpers call. 4 players. $60 pot. I have a $400 stack. Flop: T ♠ 8 ♣ A ♠ I have flopped two pair on an Ace high board. I didn't find the button's small pre-flop raise convincing evidence that he holds an A, but if he does, I'd like to try for a bet/three-bet on this rather draw-heavy board. I bet $20, Loosey calls $20, button now throws in a hundred dollar bill. Unfortunately, he forgets to announce the raise, so he gets back $80 change, and there is no raise. That's the crucial error, because now I can't three-bet and force the other two guys out of the pot. Turn: K ♦ Having missed the three-bet, I can't risk any more cheap cards. I bet $90, Loosey calls, random dude folds, button raises to $220, and I go all in. Loosey also goes all-in. Hmmmm. Maybe, on second thought, I was never going to win this pot, because if he calls this turn, he wasn't folding the flop either. In any case, the button calls for reasons best known to himself. River: 6 ♦ I still hold two pair, but now Loosey has hit his open-ended straight draw with his favorite hand 9 ♣ 7 ♣. The button was third best, but I forgot to note down what he had. I struggle along for quite some time but eventually my comeback starts with a pair of Queens. Hand #2: You're Calling A Shove With Say What? I pick up Q ♣ Q ♦ Under-the-Gun. I have $395, and I'm the short stack. I open for $20, and the next man to act min-raises to $40. Loosey calls. The next man, who is something of a calling station sometimes, also calls. Everyone else folds, but there is now $145 in the pot. I don't like the min-raise from the unknown, because it often means Aces, but I would like to take it down now or at least get the pot heads-up. Loosey now yells, "Shove all in, we're all calling." Yeah, OK, that's really bad etiquette in a multi-way pot, but no one is going to crap on the guy, because he's so hopeless. I just chuckle to myself and shake my head. "In that case, I'd better shove while I'm still ahead," I say. "I'm all-in." The min-raiser folds. Loosey calls. The other guy folds. Apparently, Loosey believes that my pre-flop all-in shove means AK, because he triumphantly tosses out his 9 ♣ 8 ♣ when a 9 ♥ falls on the 97 rag flop. The dealer finishes running out the cards, and my Queens stand up. Min-raiser is crying, because he claims he folded pocket Sevens. Poor baby. Now that I'm deep and keenly aware of the Loosey Goosey who acts three places after me, I want to establish an image that I'm willing to play with him, and I also want to get involved in a lot of hands with him. I'm still stacking chips and don't catch much in my blinds, but now it's my button. Time for a humor hand. Hand #3: Fun With 74 Off A nit limps, and it folds to me on the button, where I look down at Any Two Cards. In this case, they happen to be 7 ♦ 4 ♠. I raise to $25, small blind folds, Loosey calls in his big blind as he would do with any random hand (although it can't be more random than mine), and -- somewhat to my surprise -- the nit also calls. Fine. More dead money for me when he folds on the flop. 3 players. $75 pot. Flop: 7 ♥ A ♦ K ♦ It would be OK to make the C-bet and try to take it down right now, but I do have a bluff-catcher here, and I decide to let Loosey take a stab on the turn. I check behind. Turn: 6 ♠ Loosey bets $30, nit folds, and I just don't believe in Loosey's big ole scary less-than-half pot bet. I call. There's no reason to raise him off a bluff since I already have a bluff-catcher, and I don't care about protecting my pair of sevens, no kick. River: 3 ♣ He looks at me and figures I have to hold a pair of Ace with no kick -- just enough to catch him if he tries to bluff his missed flush draw. He checks, and I check, and my hand is good. He flashes me his Queen high diamond flush draw as he mucks. But after that "screams flush draw" turn bet, I'm calling pretty much any non-diamond river, so he had no way to win by bluffing. I sure don't tell him that, though. I've been sitting in seat 10 all this time, not my favorite seat. I prefer 1, 5, or 6. However, I don't move into 5 or 6 for almost three hours, because there's a skilled player in seat 7 who seems to think on my level and read me pretty well, and I don't want to give this player position on me. Finally, he leaves, and there's a game of musical chairs, and I end up in seat 5, with an Armenian jeweler (I sometimes wonder if all Armenians are jewelers, or if it's just the ones you meet at the poker table) in seat 6. He offers to sell his watch to his admirers for the low, low price of $165,000 American dollars, and, needless to say, since it's a lowly 2/5 NL game, he doesn't get a lot of interest. Thanks to the pocket Queens and some back-and-forth, I'm making a decent comeback from my bad start of the day, and I now have about $800 in front of me. 180 big blinds is enough to allow me to see a lot of flops and run a lot of plays, especially when I have a loose bad player in the mix. Loosey is in seat 2, so I've got much better position on him now. Here's the result. Hand #4: I Play a Monster Pot at Last I'm in a somewhat early position, and I limp in with A ♣ 3 ♣. With 180 big blinds, there's nothing wrong with opening hands like these for a small pot sweetener raise, but this time I limp to see what develops. Jeweler next to me limps, some other guys limp, Loosey checks his option in the big blind. 6 players, $30 pot. Flop: K ♣ 8 ♣ A ♦ Well, I have flopped the joint -- a pair of Aces with a re-draw to the nut flush. I have no evidence that anyone else has an Ace, but if they do, I'm out-kicked. I have no reason to want a King or a smaller flush draw to drop. It checks to me, I check, everybody checks. We see a free turn. Turn: J ♣ There it is. I have the stone cold nuts, at least for the moment. I have no special reason to think anyone has a set -- surely, most sets are betting that flop -- so my only real concern is a re-draw to the straight flush, a relatively remote possibility. I'm now looking to get all the money in the pot. Checks to Loosey. He makes a mighty $5 bet, bringing the pot to a total of $33. (The dealer has already scooped a couple of bucks for the rake.) I don't know what card he holds here, maybe the Q ♣ but I don't pin much hope on him. I raise to $30, the pot minus the odd dollars. Jeweler hasn't been at the table much -- he has mostly been walking, hustling jewelry, and making phone calls in Armenian -- and he really fumbles the ball here. He picks up his bills and picks up some chips and fumbles and mumbles and somehow he drops some random chips over the line before he can pick them up. The dealer calls a string bet and says Jeweler is restricted to his $155 or so raise that's already out there. It folds around back to me, and now I make a rather unsubtle move here. I can tell he likes his hand, and I know that he's willing to put a lot more money behind his hand. I'm not sure that there's any difference between $500 and $800 to a guy wearing a $165,000 watch, even if that price is retail. I shove all-in. He insta-calls. I show my nut flush, and he nods and says, "I thought you had four flush cards." In other words, he thought I was semi-bluffing the turn, and he had the perfect cards to catch me, 9 ♣ 7 ♣ for a flush with a straight flush redraw. Because I checked the flop, and because my four-bet on the turn is such an overbet, he had every logical reason to put me on one of my big stupid plays. It's even possible that his fumble with his 3-bet was an act to induce me to make a much larger 4-bet than I normally would, because I might read it as him trying to make a play against me. If he's still drawing, then I can shove, price him out of the pot, and re-steal. So, he didn't do anything particularly wrong, but I pretty much did everything right and also happened to hold the right cards. Yay me. The river card is anything except the T ♣ and I scoop my by far biggest pot of the trip. $1,600. Go me. Even after my terrible start to the day, I'm now comfortably ahead for the table. I decide to take an early dinner break, because my stack is larger than I like for a 2/5 game. I head off to the deli for some Matzo Ball Soup, but they make me wait about 30 minutes while they hunt and kill the mighty Matzo. Just as I've finished eating, IMOM and an old teammate from the blackjack days turns up. B. looked about 19 all those days years ago on the team. Now I guess he looks about 30. It's disgusting how he never gets any older. Anyway, we peppered him with questions about his world travels -- after he cashed out of the team, he first traveled Latin America playing blackjack, and then, when he ran out of blackjack games to play, he traveled China teaching English and also played 1/2 NL and 1/3 NL all over Asia and Australia. Now he is taking his ill-gotten gains (ha!) so that he can find a cheap condo in Vegas and retire to a life of leisure. Well, there are sure as heck a lot of cheap condos for the cash buyer, so I don't think he'll have any trouble with that project. He's quite a character. "What languages do you speak?" I ask. "Mandarin and Spanish," he says. "A little German." About like my sister. Nothing like learning those closely related language groups, is there? We asked him about poker play in Macau, and he says they used English at the table, because in Hong Kong it's Cantonese and in Macau it's Mandarin. (Or maybe it's the other way around.) "Also, a lot of guys will sit at the table, and they look Asian, but they open their mouth, and you realize they're from California," he says. M-kay. That's pretty good to know. I guess I thought people who spoke Cantonese could understand Mandarin and vice-versa, sort of like the Portugeuse can understand Spanish, but if everybody has to poke along in English, it makes it all the easier for those of us who barely speak one language. Then it's back to the wars. This table didn't hold any noticeably god-awful players. I'd just call it a random table with some decent and some meh. I got off to another terrible start. It seemed like I was just bluffing off my money, to tell you the truth. I also made a $65 river call that I probably didn't need to make. This really stinks, I'm thinking. I've won my biggest pot, by far, of the entire trip today, and it would just be unbelievable if I turned it into a losing day. I looked at my watch from time to time and considered quitting early, but then I decided instead to take advantage of my blufftard image to play a little tighter and maybe get paid off if I ever hit a hand. From time to time, though, I still took some stabs. Bit by bit, and chip by chip, I started to recover, although I was still around $500 down at the time. A few moments before the crucial hand, there was a string of limpers, and I pick up K ♠ T ♠ in the small blind. I decide it's time to remind people of my loose raising standards, so I raise. Everybody folds. "Ace King," darkly mutters the Asian man who just joined the game. "Close," I say. "You have one card right." I flip over my hand, and then it's on to the next. Hand #5: On the Right Side of Aces vs. Kings I now have a $530 stack. The next time I'm Under-the-Gun, I pick up A ♦ A ♣ and I make my standard open-raise of $20. The guy immediately on my left is a good, observant player who may be a professional but is certainly a good semi-pro who recognizes a lot of moves. He makes it $45 to go. He may want to isolate the loose player, but I think he also has a pretty good hand here. It folds back to me, and since I've never been shy to three-bet in the past, I'm not gonna back down now. There's $70 in the pot, and I make it $110 to go. He four-bets to $325. I five-bet all-in. He calls. I flip over my rockets, and he shows pocket Kings. The dealer runs out the board, and my hand is good. IMOM has walked over just then and sees the hand. I realize that he's getting ready to leave, and I don't mind, because it has been a crazy wild ride back to victory, and I'm pretty much ready to call it a day. Hand #6: Three Ways to Play Pocket Jacks, This One Loses However, I play another orbit and I pick up J ♠ J ♦ Under-the-Gun on my very last hand. I have a large stack here, since I've completely recovered from my downswing, and the other guy has me covered or close to it. He's an unknown player, who has not yet played a hand that I've witnessed, and he's on the button. I limp, maybe I pick up a couple of hitch-hikers, and he raises to $45. It folds back to me, and I could smooth-call the raise here and try to pick up a set. That's a decent play out of position, and it's the play I often make. However, this time, I decide to see if he's just making a button-raise, allowing me to re-steal the hand right here. Or, since he has done nothing but fold so far, maybe he has a real hand, and he'll give himself away by either 4-betting or smooth-calling. I make it $110 to go. The limpers get out of the way. Keep in mind that the dude has 1) just seen me show down Aces a few hands ago, and 2) just seen me limp/re-raise on his happy ass, which is very, very, very often Aces or Kings in these games. I believe that he has every reason to believe that I have a strong hand. His response? He makes it $250 to go. I'm either beat, or I'm going to get out-played, so I see no reason to put anything further into this pot. I muck, and he shows his pocket Queens. Good fold, Peachfront! I am the poker god. On the other hand, I could have seen a flop for $45 and tried to out-draw the turkey, but whatever. I probably have to call one flop bet anyway, unless it's a two broadway board, so I'm satisfied that I lost on the low side of what I could have lost on the hand. We get back to the room and watch some show about the Gyrfalcons. The male is a hopeless bum, who sits preening his pretty feathers while the babies starve. This is the stage last year when the young died, intones the narrator. The female finally can't take it any more. She leaves the nest, hunts and kills a rabbit, tears it up -- Gyrfalcons don't normally do this, Eagles do this, we are informed, but the rabbit is too big for her to carry -- and somehow struggles back to the cliff. Here, she lands at the foot of the cliff, exhausted, unable to lift the weight any higher. The male continues to preen, oblivious. One of the babies is gasping out its dying breath. Finally, heroically, she catches her breath and gets the rabbit to the babies. All recover and, eventually, all fledge successfully. The male continues to be clueless, and there's a humor scene where he delivers some tiny pea-pickin' mouse, and she takes it and blesses him out and sends him away to catch something bigger. Right now, Peachfront is catching the rabbit, and IMOM is catching the mice. But it could so easily turn around the other way, so I'd better not get cocky. Either way, the team is doing a bit above expectation at the moment. back - next All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2002-2017 by Elaine Radford