Get Out of the Kitchen

Sometimes I write these incredible comeback stories because they are so fun. That doesn’t mean it happens often. I could play 100 tournaments and lose due to playing this particular way. But that one time that things work out, well, that is when I write about it.

The other day I was in a PLO tournament. The monkeys were raising every pot, every betting round so mostly I just sat around folding.

It seems like in low buy-in events, lots of participants either want to get a huge stack or go home fast. Most of them go out and then head elsewhere while one monkey at each table reaps the rewards by pushing a poor hand that gets there.

So I tend to be the little mouse in the corner with the puny chips. Yet somehow they never even notice, and keep calling even after a check-raise or re-raise. That way I can double up just to keep in the game.

Level after level went by. Here I sat with very few chips. Rarely raising pre-flop, almost always folding. Just treading water enough to keep from being eliminated.

Eventually we got to the final table. Everyone else with towers of chips. Me with a dwindling little stack, hardly more than the initial amount of chips we started with.

Once again, as the monkeys spewed, I picked my spots and chipped up just enough to stay in the hunt. The other players fell very fast, unable to adjust to a different style of play and having no idea about the strength of their hands either pre or post flop. For the most part, I just kept out of their flinging poo.

Eventually, the lead monkey eliminated everyone else, as I sat there patiently.

When we got HU, he had about 23k and I had 2k.

Suddenly I came alive and that sweet, old, timid rock unleashed her inner maniac. At first, he was used to me only raising and betting the pot when I had monster hands. So failing to notice that I play a whole different game heads up, he didn’t adjust and kept folding.

By the time he finally realized that things had changed, I was up to about 6k in steals. He started playing back at me, hard, but forgot that post flop I was only staying in hands that had a very good chance of winning at showdown. So he kept chipping me up with his one pair versus my two pair. His two pair versus my trips, etc.

Eventually I got the chip lead. And then I somewhat eased off the throttle, yet once again he couldn’t readjust and kept pushing hard with hands that had virtually no chance of winning.

And then I had him down to his last 3k and he simply refused to play anymore.

That has only happened to me once before, in a tournament with a senior citizen who couldn’t take the stress of my hyper aggressiveness.

I was shocked and didn’t say a thing.

He was so shaken up that I didn’t see him again for many days. He didn’t play at all. Hopefully he learned something from the experience, but somehow I doubt that.

So there is my comeback story. It rarely happens, but it’s fun to write about when it does. If there is something to be learned, it is that players who refuse to adjust can’t win–and I am definitely the epitome of a player who has learned that the hard way!

From Worst to First

I haven’t posted in an age. But to be honest, I hardly ever play live poker anymore.

The problem is my immune system. Although I recently started a lot of different boosters to try to maintain some sort of standard of health, it seems like every time I play for any length of time in a casino, I fall ill with a cold so bad that it takes months to overcome. So most of the time I just play here and there while on vacation.

Earlier this year we went on a cruise and decided to play some poker before boarding. There was a full 2/5 PLO game going on that I had played in before during a trip to Florida. It was super juicy back then and didn’t play very high (my skill level is much better for 1/2 than 2/5 because I am the suck).

Anyway, this time the game was playing super high, so Glenn talked me into sitting at the 2/4 LHE instead where I proceeded to spew off a bunch of chips playing super loose.

So stories like that are my boring live play excursions. Unfortunately, they are becoming more and more infrequent–due to the previously mentioned health issues.

I do, however, have one fun story that happened recently. Glenn and I were in a HORSE tourney. Glenn busted out early and I felt that I was sure to follow. I kept getting outdrawn and eventually found myself with only 175 in chips, which was about three antes and not even a full bet.

So I kept going all-in. I managed to double up a few times. The chip leader was taking me on and kept raising no matter how many bets I put in, not even considering that perhaps I was starting with something decent, not just slipping my last few chips into the pot. So eventually I got back up to about 1700 in chips, which was still nothing much at the 200/400 level!

Once again, I sat back and waited relatively patiently. In those situations you can’t wait very long–especially during the Stud games when there is an ante. Due to the low number of entrants, only four players were going to get paid.

Since I was still incredibly short stacked (the chip lead had 20k), I had to make moves pretty often and managed to survive. At this point I was figuring on min-cashing, due to having such a tiny amount of chips. I waited until the bubble burst to start playing very loosely. I was still the tightest player by far, all of my readers know I’m a total rock ;)

The bubble boy could have waited it out. After a series of missteps by another player who found himself with only one BB during the hold’em level, he could have simply sat on his chips, but instead he put himself out on the bubble with a marginal hand.

Immediately after that, the aforementioned player went all-in for barely more than the BB in the the O8 round, failed and suddenly we were at three. What a luckbox, eh?

Although we were in the money, and I had no chips, I still had to choose my hands carefully, knowing that any hand would be all-in. I literally only had about three big bets and both other players had many times my stack.

To my surprise, the two big leads got into a raising war and the guy with 9k went out next. Now I was heads-up, my huge 3k vs. his 25k.

I was expecting to be out immediately, but then we switched to Razz. Muwahahaha. People literally do not know how to play Razz. It’s the easiest game, yet they play high cards and pairs all the time, thinking that somehow, due to their huge chip stack, a made hand or three babies are going to fold. I don’t have any idea why players do this, but what can I say, besides Thank You?

So that began the Felicia-monster wrecking ball of the poor dude. Sure, he did manage to outdraw me a couple of times with his crap Razz hands, but most of the time he just kept doubling me up. I refused to go all-in unless I could beat his board/possible hand. Most of the time when it was close and I had to hold my nose and go for it, I had the better hand by the river.

Eventually I was able to get even with him. Then I had the chip lead. A couple of times he outdrew me and got back to even or slightly ahead, but since I’m the more tight, cautious player, I gave up when his board developed dangerously rather than go all-in (no matter how good a start on third).

Then we switched to Stud and things continued to break well for me. Fortunately, he was almost as bad at Stud high as he was Razz. He kept raising every hand on third like he still had me outchipped 8:1. This may work to bully players who don’t know any better or when someone is still the overwhelming chip lead, but it doesn’t work on a player who now has the chip lead and knows how to play Stud. Sure, I folded a couple of hands that I may normally have played to the river, but only here and there and I made sure not to let him chip up to get the lead again.

It wasn’t long before I was able to find a hand to take him out. Once again he kept raising and re-raising, never considering for one minute that I actually had something.

And just like that, I went from 175 in chips to the being the winner.

As bad as I play, they play worse.

A Change in Geography

Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve updated this blog.

Some of the problems have had to do with my health. It has prohibited me from playing live poker as much as 2016.

The other issues include the deal with our stalker. I couldn’t care less what stalkers threaten to do to me or the harassment. But when he started threatening Glenn, and seemed more than willing to follow up on those threats, I couldn’t just ignore Glenn’s pleas to not only stop writing about it, but also to delete most of my posts about the situation. After finding out from our awesome resources the background criminal history of this individual, I can understand Glenn’s worries. It’s great that we live in a tiny neighborhood chock full of police!

And finally the third issue is that Glenn got an offer he couldn’t possibly refuse out of state. So here we are moving again after only six years in North Carolina.

Somehow I thought we’d retire and live the rest of our lives here, but things have a way of changing when we least expect them to change.

The greatest news is that we’ll be far away from the stalker. And barely any leftist, socialist, criminal whack jobs are in this area. Not that there were many in our area of NC, but this guy was definitely one of them. Give a crazy liberal a gun and sometimes there are big problems.

Sometime soon I’ll update what is going on in the poker world in our new area. Right now we are waiting to close on a new house, while we prepare to sell our old one.

Until then, good luck at the tables and God bless.

Felicia :)

Countdown to Poker

It’s almost time to play some poker! Like I’ve said lately, I haven’t been able to play much anymore. Health, health, health, blah, blah, blah.

This year I’ve only played poker a couple of times. No big wins, no big losses. One was over a two week time period, where I think I was up about $250. Better than losing.

So next week it’s off for some poker. Hopefully a little Stud and/or Omaha thrown in. I also taught Carl how to play Open Face Chinese, so maybe we’ll get to play a little of that. Carl has given up poker, but seems to like OFC and perhaps, along with Glenn and Traci (loving spouses), we’ll get a game going.

After Thanksgiving, Glenn and I will be playing again for a week. While I doubt anyone will be up for OFC, Hold’em is always a go.

Happy Holidays and God bless!

Hiatus

I’m sorry to say that I’ve kind of given up on posting. My health really tanked last fall when I was traveling so much. The cold that I got on Halloween took several months to completely kick! That scared me to the extent that I knew if I kept playing and traveling all of the time, being in card rooms and touching the cards, chips, table, etc, that I would eventually be in bed 24/7 again.

It is a bummer, but I have to reserve myself and only play a couple of times per year or risk being back in the hospital half of my life, which is definitely no fun.

Take care all, and God bless!

Winter Ills

I promised more frequent posts, but then I relapsed into my cold again. Grrr. I think maybe there is some kind of inner ear infection maybe happening, because sometimes I get a feeling of vertigo. At any rate, I am doing very well, but can’t seem to shake this winter cold/flu/inner ear infection or whatever it is.

Someone said to me that one of the reasons I tend to pick up harassers and stalkers is out of jealousy. I guess I never really hypothesized that could be the reason since I have had more than my fair share of illness and disease. Sure, I do have a great life, no doubt, but my health has always been the pits.

At any rate, if someone is so jealous of the life I lead that it drives them to harassing me online or in person and/or stalking me, all I can say is that perhaps getting a really good job promotes success in life. Finding God also tends to bring lots of people peace and happiness.

On the poker front, remember that anyone can win a tournament or a cash game session. There is such a huge luck component in poker that bad players can and do win quite a bit. The real key is consistency over time. If you find yourself winning here and there, but without stats equaling someone who is in the top percentage of overall winners, there is a problem. Instead of bragging about fleeting results, try to study and learn how to be a long-term winner. Poker is a marathon, not a sprint.

Stalking is the New Black?

I know that I have been pretty silent over the past couple of months. The first issue was that I had the cold from hell. It started around Halloween and every time it was just about over, I had to travel somewhere and relapsed. This happened so many times that I finally just decided to stay in one place until it is long gone. Just relapsed a bit again last night, ugh.

While it seems that I am ill, the truth is that I haven’t had a really bad cold for well over a year. I am much more healthy than I have been in over ten years.

The second issue I had was with a stalker. Glenn didn’t really want me to talk much about this online because the threat wasn’t totally eliminated. I have kept relatively quiet about it in the past couple of months. Eventually, however, it started bothering me more and more than I’d allowed a couple of people to silence me.

Now, had the threat been directly solely at me I’d never have stayed silent.  As I’ve stated throughout my life, I am certainly not a victim. I don’t play that game of being threatened and/or bullied by someone and capitulating. I leave that to the progressives. They can have it.

In this case, however, the threat was consistently more directed at GLENN than me! I guess stalkers believe that eliminating the spouse will help them get closer to the source? I don’t know, I’ve never stalked anyone before. Seems like a huge mental illness to me. At any rate, since my loved one was being threatened, I took his wish into consideration and kept my big, fat yap shut for once. It is one thing to be flippant and defiant about ones own life, it is much harder to maintain that attitude when the person closest to you is having his life threatened by a stalker!

In better news, I have gained back all of the weight I lost last year! My pancreas seems to be behaving wonderfully. No longer am I the 120 lb. weakling. I am not sure how long it will last, but right now I am in heaven, able to eat again with less stress than imaginable (after having pancreatitis for five years, it is impossible to eat without fear of another attack. But right now I am running very good).

Since I’m staying put until I am completely recovered from this cold, I have no idea when I’ll make it up to MGM. I’m sooooo feening on that cardroom.

I did get to play in Fort Lauderdale, however. This was during the time I wasn’t allowed to speak freely regarding my whereabouts. Yeah, Florida poker is awesome! The play is so unbelievably loose. Unfortunately, Glenn forgot our bankroll and so we just had to play for the bare minimum with some stray twenties that I had in my wallet. Glenn busted early, but I managed to triple up my first buy-in when my AKo hit two pair on the turn.

Later (after breakfast), I busted my second min buy-in when my AA was called all-in by 76s which hit trips on the river. Since I had such a small amount of money with me, I wasn’t able to play O8, PLO or the mixed games they were spreading. Next time we travel I am going to make a check-list, so we won’t forget again (this is the 2nd time Glenn has forgotten our bankroll on a poker trip and has had to either get money wired or go to a bank to have some poker money transferred). I guess I should be in charge of these things, but he is the one with the key to the kingdom, so from now on I’ll just be the one in charge of telling him not to forget ;)

Speaking of Glenn and poker, I think that the thought of PLO has somewhat renewed his interest in playing more often. I have been teaching him beginner PLO (although I am a beginner, too)! The variance almost gave him a heart attack at first, as it did me, but he will eventually grow used to it. For people who are ultra conservative, it seems like such a roller coaster to double up, bust, bust, triple, bust, double, double, triple, bust, double in such a short span of time. We tend to play games with low variance and even the ones we play that have higher variance than PLO (Stud high) are limit games, so the swings don’t seem quite so erratic. Glenn is the king of LL Draw High, which is a super low variance game. He had a hard time accepting the highs and lows of PLO the first time he played. Now he seems to be handling it better.

Expect more posts soon as my hubby is about to reach the big 50 and our anniversary is also right around the corner!

God bless.

Aruba

Saw this one a mile away. My intuition isn’t always great (doh, see some posts from the past year), but I saw through this from minute one. Especially when the rep tried to say I couldn’t speak aloud about the atrocious rake for the “package.” Red flags everywhere!

https://www.pokernews.com/news/2017/01/ppc-charged-with-racketeering-hit-with-restraining-order-26695.htm

MGM National Harbor

National Harbor Periscope

Yumyumyum!

Updates and Future Plans

Sorry that I have been unable to update this blog more often. I wrote before that I got a horrible cold that lingered on and on due to constant travel while recovering. In total the cold has been persisting for over six weeks! Every time I get over it, I have to go somewhere and end up relapsing.

I am completely blessed though, because before this I hadn’t had a cold for over a year. My immune system is definitely recovering.

Another reason I haven’t been more verbose is because I am so restricted in what I can write about. Right now I’m not really supposed to write about where I am, what is going on, possible alternatives to constant travel, future travel, specific people or places and results. That is pretty much my entire blog! So it makes writing more of a chore and is totally not my style.

Glenn even had to temporarily take down dozens and dozens of posts while I was out of the country in order to help safeguard us. Hopefully soon I will be able to make those archives available for public viewing.

Poker is always changing, but some things stay the same. Yesterday at Maryland Live there was a new promotion. High hands every 10 minutes. This is a promo due to National Harbor opening today. At any rate, by 3pm yesterday the wait list for 1/2 NLHE was over 200 deep! Yes, on a Wednesday afternoon.

Since all of my current students are up north, and most of my coaches are there as well, I will most likely spend my time in parts north after this winter. Hopefully I will be able to talk more about exactly where in the future. I don’t care for cold weather, so I plan to spend lots of time working on this new project, down south and out of the country. Sorry that I can’t be more specific.

The last pupil I had in NC has advanced so far that he no longer needs my coaching! He is already way better than me at NLHE, woohoo! He claims he is going to return for my help once he starts delving deeper into PLO, but I have a feeling he will be absolutely fine on his own and will figure it out when that time actually comes. WTG, -J- I knew you could do it. I am so very proud of you!

God bless.