Surviving the week
So I started this 'updating' deal last week, in the interest of keeping some sort of log of my poker adventures.
Recap of the last week. Jason and I threw the N. Damen Fall Classic, which got off the ground kind of slowly but eventually settling down into an 18 person NL tourney. Sadly I did not finish first, like most of the tourneys I play in, but 2nd was good enough for $120. Pete got the cards to win early on and played very well once he had them and took first.
So where do I begin? This week was so full of up and down moments that i nearly lost my sanity. It started on the ole 'Black Monday', where I sat down and lost $200 in the first 11 minutes at a table. Over the next 3 hours, with intermittent breaks of playing Burnout3 which left me equally dissatisfied with the cheating bitch AI, I brought that loss total to $700ish, nearly my entire stack (I had $900 left in my account). At this point, my poker career looked prematurely over, before it really even got off the ground. I had the fortitude (although I am sure people would probably rather argue addiction/tilt) to throw my last $200 at a table, trying to work my way back. I had been getting beat on the most consistently bad hands that I have ever seen. Everyone loses hands to bad play once in a while, when they are unlucky maybe a little more than that. This was a curse. That first table, 2 flushes cracked by full houses on the river, my straight cracked by a flush on the river, my trips never paired and i lost to a straight on the river, my high pockets getting cracked by everything else under the sun. Simply, it was hellacious. The most representative hand of this...
Hand of the Week: I was up against a maniac, true maniac player who would raise anything. After biding my time, waiting for a hand to crack him, I was dealt aces, and he immediately re-raises me twice, capping it preflop. Low and behold, the flop included an ace, was a rainbow, and did not have a straight draw. Had my luck really changed? At this point once again I have the nuts at that point, and I bet, he raises, i re-raise, he re-raises capping it. The plan is falling into place perfectly, he is a maniac trying to beat me out of a pot. The next card, another blank, no straight draw, but now there is 2 spades. I figure if he has spades he truly is a maniac, so it goes bet, raise, re-raise, re-raise to cap once again. The river. A fucking spade. I bet once, to see if he could possibly have the spade, he re-raises, and I call. He turns over his cards. 2 spades. He had no pair on the flop, or any realistic draw, and yet he still capped it against me. He capped it against me on the turn. If I had even paired any card I could have won. This is how monday went. There really isn't any description that can fit the torment, angst, rage, depression, and questioning that I had at that moment. Final tally on the hand. $100 spent by me, $230 in the pot. Capping the bets on the flop is the equivalent of me giving you a prop bet that you have 5% winning, and if you win you only win even money, and you can bet however much you want. He bet the max.
Yesterday I also cracked my 3 days winning, 1 day losing trend, which is terrific, but looked for a while that it would never happen. I was down $250 last night with all the similar trappings of monday happening. In 5 minutes I had the top trips beaten both times by a guy all-in on a club draw (at least I give him credit for having 4 to the flush on the flop), although I still didn't pair. Everything was going wrong, and then wham, you finally win a few of the hands where the people at the table don't catch any ridiculously lucky cards, and you finish up.
How Lukas is doing in his new (part-time) career:
This week : $570
Career: $1560
One more week? My monthly bills are almost there.