I hate, hate, hate being sick. There are many things that are unpleasant that I tolerate quite well, but being ill is not one of them. I have a bit of a head cold (darn those sinuses), and it's driving me nuts.

After not playing for quite a few days in a row, I have spent a little time online the last couple days. Some of it has been the lack of a bankroll, but thanks to a couple good sessions, I have now run my $0.94 up to almost $7.00. I had a chance to hit $10.00 at lunch today, but bled a couple bucks back after doubling up early. I think if I get around to depositing I'm going to have to really focus on my play -- I get distracted surfing, reading blogs or whatever, and next thing I know I've called an extra bet with an ugly board. I also need to take more notes on players -- I laid down top pair, mediocre kicker to a river bet from a player that I should have tagged previously as a total maniac. He was betting a pair of fricking 3s after checking the flop and the turn, and his weak hand took the pot.

All this may or may not ever happen. I get bored, you know, so we'll see.

I'm starting to think that the poker boom has peaked and will soon implode faster than Jenny McCarthy's career.

I was travelling for work this past week and stayed at a random large chain hotel in a random big-city suburb. Where is not relevant. I went out for the evening after checking in and came back sometime between 1:00 and 2:00 AM.

When I returned, a large group of preteens (okay, they might have been as old as 14 or 15) plus a parent type or two are starting up a hold'em tournament in the closed hotel coffee shop.

Ugh.

I know I live a sheltered life and grew up in a different era, but when you're 12, shouldn't you be *sleeping* at that hour?

On an unrelated note, I'm giving serious thought to an extended Manistee session on Friday. Guess it'll depend on the weather, since I'm not into spending more than the minimum required hour and a half each way in the car.

Screw statistics, probability and all that jazz. Poker is all about luck.

And I have none. I think I had all my luck surgically removed as a youngster.

I get orbit after orbit of junk. My blinds are always J2o or 94o or something like that. Any time I have anything even marginal in the blinds, it's raised and reraised to me.

When I get a strong hand, I never flop a set or a strong draw. If I'm lucky, I get a back door draw. Which never comes in, not that I (hardly) ever get a chance to get past the flop.

When I have a strong pair on a ragged board, I get run down on the river by a weak 2 pair or some bizarre straight draw which comes in for someone calling three and four bets all the way down with 43o.

Oh, yeah, and I fold a lot.

Ahh, that's better. I still have no luck, but at least I have vented and can go back to losing the rest of my mini-bankroll on 2 out suckouts and watching people capping with J7o.

Poker players sure whine a lot, don't they?

You'd think that it'd eventually dawn on you that it's not your night.

I've just sat down to a session of $0.25/$0.50 limit. I tell myself it's OK, since I have doubled my meager bankroll playing the always entertaining nickel-dime 6max beginner tables.

I'm wrong.

I sit down in the big blind, and promptly get 99. I call a raise. It gets reraised. Oops. Ragged rainbow flow. Board pairs Jacks on the turn. Nobody's terribly aggressive, so I hang around and not surprisingly lose to AA.

Next hand, I get 33. I call one raise. Ugly flop of 3 over cards. I fold. Guess what, someone has AA.

Third hand, I get 99, re-raise on the button. Not a pretty board, it pairs, and I lose to QQ.

Next three hands I fold the usual garbage.

And then, what do you know, AA. I raise. It's capped preflop. J high flop, two spades. Turn is a blank, river a Jack. Capped all the way down with two other players. One has random garbage, the other has J9o for rivered trips.

This, boys and girls, is how you lose $8 in less than five minutes. Yeesh.

Online poker is weird stuff, man.

I've put in a couple hours at nickel-dime tonight, you know, just killing time, surfing between hands. I rarely multi-table, since I don't have much of an attention span.

I've had pocket 2s and pocket 3s at least a dozen times, including one stretch of four hands in a row. I lost all four, but only called one beyound the (missed) flop.

Other than that, I've had TT twice, 99 once, and 66 twice. No painted pairs. Oh, and I had AA once.

I've been doing well, thanks mostly to lots and lots of King-rag suited (coming in occasionally), and a couple pocket deuces that made a wheel -- missed the straight flush draw, though. Darn.

Have I bored you yet?

Just another bad beat story. Get QQ on the button. Bet and raise the heck out of it. Capped multiple ways pre-flop and on the flop. Not terribly threatening. No overcards, no obvious straight or flush. Something like T-5-4. Turn is another undercard. I've pushed everybody out but one player. River is a J.

Other player bets, I sigh and call.

He has J-4, offsuit, for Jacks and Fours.

Calling down raises and reraises with nothing, bottom pair, bottom pair. Wow.

I'm sure this is payback for something, but I'm not sure what that would be exactly.

Then again, it could have been worse, as in Monday. Feeling flush, I stepped up to a little $0.25/$0.50 limit. Where I promptly lost with a nut full house (8s full of As, 8s on the board with the other cards being garbage, two 8s came on the turn and on the river) to someone who called all kinds of raises with 98o.

Someday, I will get paid for this.

This is not Hollywood, this is my life.

Online poker is definitely rigged. Just got crushed at $0.10-$0.20 limit. In a little over an hour and a half, I had one pair (66 at the end). No AK, AQ, AJ or AT or suited A-rag. Had KT suited once, flopped the nut flush draw and missed it. Had one other draw and missed it. Just brutal. Lost about $5.00, and I don't feel like I played incorrectly with very, very minor exceptions.

The reason it's rigged, however, is that I got 7s4s two hands in a row, another player had JJ the same two hands in a row, and he won the pot two hands in a row. Come to think of it, I had 7s4s twice more, but the JJ player had left the table by then.

So, take a deep breath. Move to a short nickel-dime table. Despite starting with a couple extremely loose plays to establish a maniac table image, I've won back two bucks plus so far.

In other news, live pizza is so much tastier than delivery. Why exactly is that?

Don't answer that.

And big thanks to the KCRW (in Los Angeles) website for not only having my main girl Kasey Chambers in studio this morning, but for having streaming audio and VIDEO on their website for those of us who live just a bit outside the metro area.
May have mentioned it earlier, but she's doing an extra show at the end of her tour, which I need to buy a ticket for. I see a couple nights of Super 8 luxury in my future.

Whoa, freaky. I just got Qs6s two hands in a row. RIGGED!

Not much to write about lately. I've been building my micro-bankroll at 7 Sultans playing nickel dime and dime two dime limit. There are a few cheap freezeout MTTs tonight, so I might take a shot if nothing else develops. But basically, it's been grinding away at the micro-limits, slowly improving my level of play.

And I do think I am improving. I've extracted maybe 1% of the learning of SSH so far, but I've picked up enough to make a difference -- more than anything else, I am definitely being more aggressive. I have picked up quite a few pots by betting out when nobody has show much strength and by value betting the river.

I'm no genius, and I haven't won enough to buy much more than an Extra Value Meal (supersized), but you have to start somewhere.

Thanks to Iggy for mentioning this humble blog. You probably already read him (http://guinnessandpoker.blogspot.com), but if you don't, get over there. And then learn it, use it, save up to 22% with bonus code IGGY at Party Poker.

I have eaten once at every fast food restaurant in town this week, except for KFC. Ugh. They all have sucked especially hard lately.

Whatever spare money I have has gone to concert tickets, and now there's another show for me to go to on my mini-tour of the Midwest later this month. I'll be broke, but it's a good kind of broke.

More later when this ^&%%@! week is over.