Dipped a couple toes back in the online waters this week. After cashing out to deal with life’s little expenses (you know, like housing, transportation and student loans), I scrounged up a few bucks to reload. Ahh, the thrill of the chase – the bonus chase.

I’d like to say I’ve been fabulously successful. Scott McM successful.

Yeah, right.

Here’s a little tip: When coming back, try and avoid the world’s toughest $1/$2 limit game – the full ring tables at Will Hill. Nothing but TAGs chasing that 5 GBP per hour bonus for playing.

Bonus tip: Try and avoid running QQ into 77, AQ into AA, TT into 63o, etc.

Your bankroll will thank you.

After a downish session, I had to pull up Pokertracker for the first time in months just to see how bad I’ve been running at Will Hill. It’s bad. Very bad. More than –5.00 BB/100 bad. It’s not hard to see why, either – my went to showdown percentages are in the ballpark, but my won $ at showdown percentages are absurdly low – twenty to thirty percentage points below where they should be.

Obvious conclusion: It’s still rigged.

---

I also hit up the Mookie on Wednesday – didn’t get home early enough on Tuesday or last night to play in the Wheatie or the DADI, respectively. Golf > Poker. And, of course, AQo >>>>>> QQ.

---

Not much else going on. Thank goodness for the long holiday weekend. I need it to recharge and to get a bunch of stuff done around the house.

---

Vegas envy is setting in. Jealousy is currently at level ‘Cyan’, although I’m sure it’ll be all the way to ‘Deep Forest Green’ by the end of next week. Any other not-goings want to sling a few chips online next weekend? Call it “WPBT in Las Vegas: NOT THE”.

---

Another highlight of the summer for me (and one of the few times I’ll curse not having cable TV) is the Tour de France. Yeah, a bike race. If that makes this a totally gay online diary, so be it.

The insanity starts tomorrow, and it’s going to be crazier than any race in approximately forever – no Lance, and now they’ve kicked out Ullrich, Basso, Mancebo and a whole bunch of other guys. Suddenly, you have to move the ‘other Americans’ (Leipheimer and Landis) up to about the top of the pre-race favorites list. Bookies all over Europe must be going nuts trying to deal with this development.

And scratch that grumbling about no cable – at least this way I won’t have to listen to the endless commentary about doping.

Finally, before you even think about putting it in comments -- this blog is not on the juice.

Hello. I am an online poker player.

{Note to law enforcement: I don't live in Washington state, so you don't need to send me a threatening email. Thanks.}

I wonder why I bother playing live. I'm not especially skilled at it, and I'm not sure I want to invest the energy in fixing the assorted tells, leaks, etc. that ensure mediocrity. So for the forseeable future, I'm going to treat live poker much like playing the lottery -- it's a -EV diversion that should only be done with money I'm okay with losing.

This also means that I shouldn't invest any sort of money into qualifying for the WSOP, not that I have, really. I'll just settle for living vicariously through those of you who've qualified. And I am definitely looking forward to reading some Las Vegas trip reports.

*

I had a chance to exercise the losing skills a bit this weekend. Played a very small home game -- 4 players, 3 tournaments, SnG style, winner take all. Finished 2nd, 4th and 2nd. Ugh. Had a sizable chiplead in the first one, but after about the first fifteen minutes I never caught anything of note the rest of the evening. No pair, no draw, I fold. Hard to fight back when you're holding jack high and are outchipped. Anyway, the official brother of Mr. Genius and Mr. TGOD took down all three games. It didn't hurt that he was getting hit by the deck like a submissive in a, uh, well, never mind the simile. Nice job.

*

J was the host of the home game, and he had an unopened deck of cards to use. He broke the seal, fished out the two jokers, and counted the cards. He came up one short. M counted the cards. He came up one short. We sorted them out. No nine of diamonds.

This deck was from Harrah's Lake Tahoe, and the seal noted that the deck had previously been used in the casino.

Brick and mortar casinos are rigged too.

*

I haven't played otherwise for several days due to a golf tournament. I got drafted to fill in, which I was happy to do since it meant that I spent Thursday afternoon and Friday on the golf course instead of dealing with telephone calls.

The highlight was on Saturday -- I made an eagle 2 on a par 4. Haven't done that in approximately forever. Too bad there wasn't a big skins game!

*

With that, lunch is over and it's time to get back to work.

The good people at Full Tilt Poker have put up $100,000 for charity if Paris Hilton will take on Clonie Gowen in a heads up pillow fight poker game.

Full details are HERE.

They also have the obligatory 'who's hotter' poll. Regrettably, "both, preferably at once" is not an option.

I kid.

Iggy: "money is soooo overrated" **

on_thg: "um, no it isn't."

I think I win.





**Quoted with permission.

Thanks Pokerstars for the blogger freeroll.

Can I have those three and a half hours back?

{Warning: Hand histories, bad beat stories, all that crap you probably hate. Don't read if you can't stand 'em.}

A rainy Sunday in Michigan, so I settled in for a little donkey poker. 2247 runners.

Not interesting early on, as we had at tight table with four or five people sitting out. Donked around some, chipped up nicely with 5c4c making a straight on the turn and a flush on the river vs. a turned two pair. At least things moved fast - our table got in 121 hands in the first hour. Ended at T4010.

Hour 2, still at the same table to start, finally moved after another 15 minutes. Finally flop trips from the big blind with T9o. Iggy joins the table and I get to play about three hands with him on my left, then I get moved to a table with Bazkar. Double up with QQ vs 99. QQ holds up for a side pot against 77, loses the 'main pot' against a short stack's AJs. At the second break I have a mediocre T7535.

During the last half hour, I'm scrambling to get ready for Father's Day activities. I finally grab the laptop and dash out the door at the break. I'll play the rest out from my sister's house.

Which was not the best idea. Very shaky internet connection -- I got dropped about every other hand. Two kids chasing around. Dinner. Relatives. Not good. Loud. Hard to concentrate.

I missed a little more than five minutes of blinds and antes after the break, and am left with T5910. Only missed one playable hand - AKo.

Third hour. I'm not able to chat -- sorry to anyone that popped in, I simply couldn't keep my connection up long enough.

Time for a fun hand. UTG limps. One other limper. I'm in the BB with ATo and check my option. Flop is TT5. UTG leads out for 2x the BB. I push. He has AA and doubles me up. Thanks for that. California April gets moved to my right. I'm moved right after that to another table, one with G-Rob. Miss a chance to triple up my short stack when I fold 55 to a raise and a reraise. Eventually get QQ, which holds up against A9o. I'm still sucking wind with less than T10,000. Bleed, bleed, bleed, get desparate, push. Tc9c vs. AcJc. Oops. But I make two pair and survive. Even I get a suckout every once in a while.

And then I took out G-Rob. With K9o v. K8o. I win the G-Rob bounty!

Oh, what do you mean there wasn't one? Feh. Sorry, G-Rob. Figured your range at 'any 2' at that point. Up to T30,000.

Miss the chance to take out two players with QJs -- didn't like putting half of my stack on the line there (since my M was still only about 5). Lose some chips trying to steal with 99 and having to lay it down on an AJx flop.

Finally, on hand #335, EP minraises, I come over the top for 10x the BB with TT. The small blind has 4x my stack and calls with 99. Flop is 955, I don't resuck, game over.

91st place. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

I shut off the stupid computer, ate strawberry shortcake with ice cream and played heads-up Duck Duck Goose with my 2 year old nephew.

Not a bad day. Would have been a much better day if I'd had something to show for the poker. Oh, well.

Since the weekend just can't get here fast enough, a few random thoughts for Friday afternoon ...

* I was reading the local newspaper the other day and skimmed over the local softball league results when this caught my eye: There are eight teams in the Thursday Night Church League. Six of them are churches.

The other two are sponsored by a bar and the local bowling alley.

* Online poker references keep popping up all over the place. In 'Blondie'. In a truly wretched McDonald's commercial (ba da da da da, I'm NOT lovin it).

* Washington state, dropping the hammer on internet poker fans. Apparently they plan to hire an investigator. Gee, how do you think they plan to pay his/her salary?

Hey, Washington, why not Bonus Code: Chris Gregorie instead?


* Tiger Woods potentially not making the cut at the U.S. Open? Unamerican.

* Worst poker day in a while last night. Dropped a buyin and a half playing PLO, pretty much all of it to one lucky donk. But I suppose I learned something -- my flopped nut straight with a redraw to broadway might have been a bit of a favorite against the donk's top set, but with the inclusion of a third person with a really lousy flush draw actually made me a slight underdog and top set the favorite. Yeah, he made his boat on the turn, but at least he had better odds than I thought to push over the top of my re-pot.

* Bored, bored, bored, bored.

... at least for a moment.

I received a particularly appealing signup bonus/rakeback offer from an affiliate of Betfair Poker today. Betfair is another Crypto site and, since I tend to play there anyway, I'd definitely take advantage. But then I remembered that Betfair doesn't allow U.S. players. Sigh.

I went to the terms and conditions page of their site, and noticed the following:

# Buy-ins are available in Sterling, Dollars and Euros
# Betfair Poker blocks US customers and therefore you'll be mainly playing against European poker players

Don't be American but play in Dollars!

I thought this was odd until I remembered that most Crypto rooms don't block U.S. players, thus the network has dollar tables and it'd probably be a pain for Betfair to block them.

Oh, well. Happy Flag Day!

This guest post is from official friend of this blog Dave F. Beatty, currently somewhere on assignment or possibly holed up in his bunker in Southern Nevada. As usual, I have no idea what he's going on about and it really doesn't have anything to do with poker, but he has contributed poker content from time to time, so what the heck. He also says that reading this New York Times Magazine article on the online poker playing college kid bandit first would be a good idea. -- Ed.


The Apple Pie Holdup
By Dave F. Beatty, The Times of Las Vegas and Surrounding Area

Annie DeKuiper was on pie tilt. For months now, DeKuiper, a 19-year-old Grand Valley State University student, had been on pie tilt, and she would remain on pie tilt for weeks to come. Alone in the kitchen, usually near the end of one of her long baking sessions, the thought "I'm on pie tilt!" would occur to her. Girlfriend, she'd tell herself, you gotta stop. These thoughts sounded the way the fire alarm always sounds at 3:00 a.m. when you fall asleep and burn the apple crisp. She would ignore them and go back to baking. "The side of me that said, 'just one more try at creating an award winning blueberry tart,' was the side that always won," she told me months later. "I couldn't get away from it, not until all my money was gone." In a little more than a year, she had run through $2,000 trying to win a blue ribbon at a county fair, any county fair, for her baking prowess.

"Pie tilt" is a made-up term for a spell of insanity that's taking hold on college campuses all over the country. The pie tilter goes berserk, blindly baking their way into the poorhouse in an endless quest for validation. Severe pie tilt can spill over out the kitchen door, resulting in reputation, careers, marriages and fifty pound sacks of flour being tossed away like so many fallen souffles. This is the kind of pie tilt that DeKuiper had, pie tilt so indiscriminate that one Friday afternoon this past April, while on her way to pick up the new Rachael Ray book at Meijer, she cast aside the Annie DeKuiper everyone knew -- cheerleader, FFA member, volunteer at the baby animal shelter, daughter of an international relief worker -- and became "Bad Annie" Dekuiper, the girl who held up a Meijer store over a box of superfine baking sugar.

On April 13, 2006, Annie went to her local Meijer supercenter to pick up a new cookbook, hoping for fresh inspiration. She went alone, in her battered 1998 Chevy Malibu, packing a pad and paper along with about thirty bucks in cash. After browsing the book section and making her selection, she realized that the hazelnut mud pie recipe she wanted to try required superfine sugar.

Crisis. She didn't have the necessary funds. Pulling the box off the shelf, she quickly scribbled out a note: "I'm taking the sugar - don't say anything and NOBODY GETS HURT". This was a bluff. "Are you kidding?" the cashier's face seemed to say. She did her best to make it look serious. With agonizing slowness, she paid for her new book, grabbed the bag, turned around and walked out to her car.

DeKuiper drove on home, unaware of the firestorm that she had ignited. She found it hard to concentrate on the cooking call in show she listened to every day on the radio. She was certain that the store had video of her taking the sugar. She wondered what her father's coworkers in the Congo would say when they heard what had become of her daddy's only daughter.

The drive ended, and DeKuiper raced immediately to the kitchen. She cracked open her new cookbook and right away used up most of the sugar to try out her new recipe. She skipped dinner and tried making a Black Forest torte. Her phone rang, but she ignored it. Eventually she went to Starbucks for a scone and some coffee drink that took two full minutes to order. When she returned home, the police were waiting for her. They handcuffed her, took her to the county jail, extracted a confession and tossed her in the lockup.

DeKuiper's first call was to the Martha Stewart helpline. They were sympathetic and gave her the phone number for David Boies, a prominent attorney. "She was at the end of her rope," a source told me. "She couldn't believe she had done it. Not that she was denying anything, but she felt like she was watching another person's life."

To the college kids today, competitive baking is as familiar as Mad Dog 20/20, late night White Castle and the all-weekend hookup. Baking - particularly pie baking - is a vice of choice. Freshmen arrive already schooled by the Food Network in the legend of Sandra Lee, the moderately attractive woman who turns boxed cake mixes into gourment desserts. Throughout the dorms and the kitchens all over campus you can hear the "beep beep beep" of microwave timers going off as more than $20 million worth of ingredients are turned into baked goods each month.

Resarchers say that trying to win a blue ribbon at a county fair can be addictive. Bakers say it's addictive. The federal government says that the use of too much lard is illegal. But colleges have done little to stop the spread of competitive baking on campus. Administrators who would never consider letting Nike sell shoes on campus
have made major appliances a standard amenity, putting every student with a cutting board and wooden spoon minutes away from 24-hour high-stakes baking opportunities. Recipe services advertise heavily in publications directed at college students like the National Enquirer and students have been known to publish pictures of themselves in the yearbook with captions like "Mitzi gets her cherry pie cherry broken!". Some schools have even allowed appliance stores to establish a physical on-campus presence by selling them property to build a Best Buy or Circuit City. An unregulated network of county fairs, local cookoffs and neighborhood block parties are given unfettered access to students, and the students have been given every possible opportunity to bake and bake and lose to their hearts' content to women with names like 'Flo' and 'Alice'. Never before have the means to lose so much been available to to so many at such a tender age.

An estimated 14 million of 17 million U.S. college students ate pie last year, and at least one percent of that number is engaged in competitive pie baking. According to a study by the University of New Free Caledonia, the number of college women who reported entering a bake-off quadrupled the last year alone. "The kids really think
they can become the next Betty Crocker," said Jeff Dubinsky, who studies piemaking addiction at McDonald University in Illinois. "This is a gi-normus social experiment. We really don't know whose face the pie is going to end up on or something."

Annie DeKuiper is far from the only college student to see the competition's role in her life grow from a hobby to a destructive obsession. Researchers from the University of Second Guessing Health Center interviewed a random sample of 8 college students and found that 1 out of every 8 of the 2 or so bakers in the study fit the clinical definition of a pathological piemaker, suggesting that college competitive bakers may number in the hundreds or even thousands. Many, like Laura Priztky, a 21-year-old senior at Southwestern Indiana State Tech, have had weeks where they're baking during most of their waking hours. Rarely leaving the kitchen, they take their cookbooks with them to bed, fall asleep each night with a pie in the oven and think, talk and dream about nothing but winning blue ribbons. By the time Pritzky finally quit, the chase seemed to be both the cause of all her problems and possiby her only means of escaping them. "I kept on baking so I wouldn't have to look at my bank account, my relationships, my life, my nonstick pans," she told me.

Other addicts, like Alexa Arguello, a 19-year-old living outside Youngstown, Ohio, decide to "go pro", drop out of school, and wind up driving beat up VW Microbusses from town to town, looking for the next big competition. Having maxed out four credit cards, Arguello can no longer afford the finest ingredients, and struggles to crank out award-worthy confections in her Easy Bake Oven. When she beds down for the night, she flips through her collection of dog-eared recipe cards. "I can't get away from it," she told me. "And I really don't want to. I'll keep baking even if it means being broke for the rest of my life, or at least until my teeth rot. I've fallen in love with the rush."

In its outline, DeKuiper's story closely resembles that of the stereotypical type-A homemaker personality. Before the rise of competitive baking, however, such a story typically involved a woman in her 50s or 60s and took a decade or more to run its course. DeKuiper, however, went from homecoming queen to felon (this is Ottawa County, after all) in sixteen months. Her fall took place not in a casino or bar, but within the familiar confines of her kitchen, where she was seldom more than sixty minutes away from another potential bakery classic. She'd been brought up too well to waste herself working at McDonald's and knew too much to just bake for pleasure. She wanted to compete, to see her superior abilities yield blue ribbons, a transaction she equated with being the best. Her stubborn faith in her own ability proved to be her undoing.

Today's pathological bakers are often too young to know any better -- too young, in fact, to legally make desserts that require Grand Mariner or other liqueurs. Until now, these young addicts were ignored by the news media, which swooned over the top of the baking pyramid, the Barefoot Contessas and Giada DeLaurentiisses, the sensual seductresses who make apple pie a la mode look and sound like a sexual experience. No one was interested in those whose losses on the county fair circuit keep Kansas wheat farmers in business, at least not until a relief worker's daughter stuck up a Meijer.

...

Losses are high as $2,000 are rare on today's competitive baking scene, but they are by no means extraordinary. One evening I stopped in for a snack at a Caribou Coffee, a shop a few blocks away from the local fairgrounds, where by chance I met Rowina Johnson, a junior talking artificial versus real vanilla with a pal on her cellphone. Like most competitive bakers, Johnson says she knows a few losers but does not consider herself one. "I still bake," she said, "but I've cut back. I used to bake too much. I mean, I've won a couple blue ribbons in my time, but I've spent $1,000, easily, trying to perfect a peach cobbler." I'd heard the same from almost every competitive baker I'd spoke with: I've spent a lot of money, but I've won a ribbon or two.

Johnson said DeKuiper never had much of a reputation among the hard-core Michigan county fair circuit crowd. "The funny thing is, she wasn't even in that deep," she told me. "Two thousand is nothing. I know whole sororities full of kids who think nothing of dropping a few grand trying to master the French Silk. If everyone did the same thing she did," she added with a smirk, "well, Meijer would be under siege!"

Didn't feel like doing anything productive when I got home yesterday, so I played for a bit. The session had 'disaster' written all over it. Start by playing PLO above my bankroll at Full Tilt -- frankly, any NL/PL game there is above my bankroll at the moment, but I did it anyway.

Early on, I get a playable hand in middle position, QQJT, single suited but no clubs. Four players to the flop.

Flop is 89J, with two clubs. EP pots, I re-pot, making it $10 to go with $15 in the pot, two players behind call. Uh oh.

Turn is a harmless 6 of hearts. EP pushes for less than the pot, I call also all in. So do the two behind, the last of whom has us all covered.

River is the ace of clubs.

EP shows a queen high straight with a missed redraw to a king high straight.
Hero shows a queen high straight with no redraws.
LP shows a set of 9s.
Button shows a nine high club flush. He called all those bets and raises with the sucker end of the straight made on the turn and a redraw to a crappy flush, which hit. I have no idea how he called on the flop, let alone the turn.

Oh, well. It's not the first time that the worst hand on the turn (12.5% equity) has drawn out. I was 50% to tie, 50% to lose at that point. I suppose I could have folded the turn and saved myself $15 or so, but folding with the current nuts is still something that I find it difficult to do. Level zero play.

Object lessons here: (1) You need chips on the table to push people out. I was hurt by not having more (and so was EP) -- we couldn't price anyone out on the turn. (2) The princess, of course, was right. Redraws are not only your friend, they're necessary.

Anyway, the omatard from the above hand ended up losing every last one of his chips. I reloaded for the rest of the money I had on FT (less than half a buyin, should have moved down) and ground my way back up to even. A good time to quit. No harm done.

Also played a token SnG and saw something I don't think I've ever seen before. We reach the final table with blinds at 50/100. The chip leader has more than 10,000 chips, nearly 40% of all chips in play.

Fifteen minutes later, he's the bubble boy.

After losing a couple pots, he tangled with the 2nd biggest stack. Flop of QJx, they go to war. All in on the flop. 2nd biggest stack has a set of jacks. The big stack has KT for an open ended straight draw. He doesn't improve and is crippled.

Wow.

Oh, and by the way, AA held up twice, against 66 and 77. Maybe things are turning around.

--

I'm not much of a blog pimp, but allow me to put in a few words about a couple really outstanding posts: If you haven't read Dr. Pauly's "Born to Gamble" series or Absinthe's post "No Good Deed" on the realities of tournament play, you're missing some of the best writing of the year. Trust me.

--

Ye gods I have a lot of things I could post about. Many of them are not too exciting , though, so I think I'll limit my drivel-posting to the first section of this entry.

I will mention that I read my way through All In: The (Almost) Entirely True Story of the World Series of Poker by Jonathan Grotenstein and Storms Reback. A very easy read (one evening), it's a decidedly non-comprehensive history of the WSOP. If you're at all well-read in the poker genre, you'll feel like you've read many of the stories before, but there are still plenty of nuggets that you probably didn't know. I enjoyed it, the price was right (got it through the library), and I'd say it's worth checking out.

You know, it's amazing what you can get through the library. Grand Rapids is about as red state, moral majority, uptight conservative as you can possibly get, and yet you can obtain a copy of Skin City : Behind the Scenes of the Las Vegas Sex Industry from the main branch.

Not that you would, of course...

in Okie-Vegas. Gambooling and boozing it up this weekend. Have fun, those of you who made it.

Some Vegas envy starting to set in also ... the only way I'll be there is if by some fluke I win a WSOP seat in the Pokerstars blogger freeroll.

Not much else going on. For some reason, I'm signed up for the Mookie, starting right about NOW.

Dear Poker Gods:

Please let me know when you've decided that I've had enough punishment.

I know KK is worthless, but does it really have to lose to an 84o calling all in preflop?

Thanks in advance. I'll be waiting.

<3, on_thg

Lacking in poker content, mainly because there wasn't much played this weekend. I got in about an hour of PLO, losing most of a buyin on Party when pot pot pot couldn't convince a guy to lay down his bottom set to my flopped nut straight and he hit a runner-runner nine high flush. Oh, well. Picked up most of a buyin on Full Tilt, so it was about a wash.

Instead of playing, I spent most of the weekend at the golf course, where (brag post?) I think I set a personal record by making five birdies on Sunday. Too bad there were three "others" on the card as well -- just enough to keep it from being a career round.

The hole that kills me is the eighteenth. It's a 410 yard par 4 with a sharp dogleg to the right 200-220 yards off the tee. Despite playing the course for more than twenty years, I still haven't come up with a consistent way to attack it. The problem is that I can't make the ball move left-to-right, at least not with any consistency. If you hit a decent straight drive, you're in the trees on the left. Same if you draw it, which is usually what happens. If you hit an iron or a fairway wood, you leave yourself a very long shot to the green and run the risk of not even getting it to the corner.

It got me again, this time resulting an a frustrating triple bogey and quashing the possibility of a career best round.

I'm sure there's a poker analogy in there somewhere -- I could tie this to my complete inability to get KK to hold up against JJ, 99 or 22 (recent examples) deep in a multitable tournament, but ... I gotta go back to work.

Po Ker Stars. One of the two best sites out there. Showing the love.

Thanks, Stars!

10:50 p.m. Arrive home after nine holes of golf and pizza.

10:54 p.m. Say to self: ‘Hey, how about a little poker to cap off the evening?’

*Ding*

THE_POKER_GODS (10:54:02 pm): DON’T DO IT.

Huh. The poker gods use instant messaging?

on_thg (10:54:32 pm): But I feel like playing, just a little.
THE_POKER_GODS (10:54:38 pm): DON’T DO IT. THAT’S FINAL.
on_thg (10:54:55 pm): Not even a few hands?
THE_POKER_GODS (10:54:59 pm): NO. IT’S TOO LATE. GO TO BED.
on_thg (10:55:05 pm): Meh.
on_thg (10:55:10 pm): Hey, look, it’s a Full Tilt token SnG with a bunch of bloggers. Is that okay?
THE_POKER_GODS (10:55:29 pm): NO. GO TO SLEEP. NOW.
on_thg (10:55:38 pm): But .. but … it won’t take long … and I’m due for a win!
THE_POKER_GODS (10:55:46 pm): NYET. NEIN. WHATEVER IS CHINESE FOR “NO”. DON’T YOU GET IT, DUMBASS? NO MEANS NO. NO POKER.

*Grumble*

on_thg (10:55:59 pm): Okay, screw it, I’m doing it anyway. It’s a peep, quick and cheap.
THE_POKER_GODS (10:56:06 pm): YOU’LL BE SORR-EEEE!.
SYSTEM (10:56:08 pm): on_thg is now ignoring THE_POKER_GODS

Here we go, first orbit. I can fold that, and that, and that and that!

Well what do you know, AA in the big blind. Playable cards and only fiveish hands in. Let’s get some chips!

Nickerson calls T30, SB completes, on_thg raises to T180. Nickerson calls, SB folds. (T390 in pot)

Flop 872 rainbow.

on_thg bets T240. Nickerson raises all-in (T a lot). on_thg calls.

Nickerson shows 76o.

Turn 5

River 9.

Sigh.

*Ding*

THE_REAL_POKER_GODS2 (10:59:05 pm): HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
THE_REAL_POKER_GODS2 (10:59:09 pm): HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
THE_REAL_POKER_GODS2 (10:59:12 pm): WE <3 TEH NICKERBLOG!
THE_REAL_POKER_GODS2 (10:59:16 pm): HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

You know, going to sleep sounds like a REALLY fabulous idea right now. Poker sucks.

SYSTEM (11:00:08 pm): on_thg has signed out

I've rarely felt so good about bad results.

A frustrating session last night. I'm rolling along in a Full Tilt Token SnG. Making good decisions. I have plenty of chips, in about 4th place with 12 left.

Short stack to my right pushes. I come over the top with KK. Shorty has JJ. He gets a Jack on the turn. Standard. I'm dinged, but far from out. A few hands later, I find QQ. There is a limper and a modest raise. I push for about 3x the raise. The original limper calls off most of her stack, the raiser folds. Limper shows ATs. Two aces on the board, I'm out.

Steaming, it's time for a dime tourney on Stars. I play like a ubertard and chip up like crazy, all the way to 3rd place at one point. Switch to playing conventionally and the turbo blinds start to catch up. Get that *^&^%! QQ again and push. Called by AJo. Do I even need to mention that an ace appeared on the flop?

So I busted out of both. So what?

I'm okay with it because the decisions were correct. I'm putting my opponents in the position where they're calling sizable amounts as 20/80 or 30/70 underdogs. Sure, it'd be nice if my favored monsters held up once in a while, but just doing the right thing is a good feeling.

I'm ready for a win. And I don't mean the twenty five cents I "won" in the dimer.