Up up and away

Well, the biz trip from hell has started. My 14 day trek was supposed to start by flying into Reno then heading out to Squaw Valley (site of the 60's Olympics) for a conference. Get to O'Hare and board the plane only to be told that the anti lock brakes failed. Sit on runway for an hour. Cancel flight. Schweet!

After an hour on the phone with the rescheduling folks, the three of us were bound for San Francisco (via St. Louis...can you say inching your way across this great land? Yeah, thought you could. :-D) where we rented a car and drove 3 hours back to Squaw Valley. WOO HOO!! Oh wait...forgot to mention that we boarded the exact same plane we had gotten off of 2 hours prior. Oh, and the anti lock brake issue? Not an issue flying into St. Louis...only Reno (due to elevation and length of runway). Ooooo-k!! I am feeling REALLY safe about now!

Did I mention that while we made it to Cali, our bags did not.

So, I am at this lux resort we go to every year for this conference and they manage to fuck up the key cards 5x. I kept getting locked out of my room. Jesus Christ on crutch. Am I having fun yet??

Fastforward three days...I am leaving for Thailand for work, and guess what? STILL NO BAGS!

Ok, bags arrived at my hotel in Reno exactly 12 hours before my flight(my 24 hour flying journey to Asia begins in Reno to LA to Tokyo to Bangkok). NOW WE'RE COOKIN' WIT GAS! At least I have STUFF!

Did I mention that this silly assed seriously upscale resort in Cali is totally doggie friendly with a really cool little pet shop? I got my Roma some popcorn. Roma lives and breathes for popcorn and yogurt. She's Pavlov's salivating pooch to the Nth degree when either are in front of her eyes or wafting up her nose.

Here's Roma, btw.
Isn't she the cutest??

Anyway, this little upscale pet shop had Filet Mignon flavored popcorn. I just HAD to get that for my little baby! Momma misses you, angel!!!

Gotta love a place that sells $150 collars. Can you say PEOPLE WITH TOO MUCH MONEY AND TOO LITTLE COMMON SENSE?? Well, that's what I think at least...and I live for my kids (er, dogs)!

Missed my weekly poker game and probably will again for a couple weeks. I will try to hit a couple tourneys in Thai time while I am gone, though.

Ciao for now all!

J

Joanne's Theory of Poker (in the current millenium)

[rant on]

After extensive thought and hours of playing poker both online and in 3D, discussing poker strategy with my friends, again both online and in 3D, I have come to the conclusion that it is playing poker online (along with a side order of watching poker on TV) that has created the phenomena we now have of the worst fucking players ever. Please allow me to explain my hypothesis.

I play poker in 3D alot (well, not as much as I used to, but all-in-all, my 3D play still far surpasses my online play). Playing in person (if you play reasonably good, or reasonably intelligent [or reasonably both] types of people) you don't have as many people who are going to call some ridiculous bet that an online player or newbie will jump on. (Hello! KQ off just ain't that great when it's behind a raise and a reraise - well, to reasonably good players, right?!) So, why do we see so much bullshit? Oh, wait, let me please define bullshit for you first:

Bullshit #1: All-in, first hand in to a tournament

(and subsequently every other hand thereafter)

To wit, I was watching a tournament earlier today and first hand, three people went All-In. This started with one A-I and then two callers. There was not one single pair. We're talking AQ vs. AJ. vs AT. SAY WHAT??? We're not even talking big slick!! (And there's a reason they call AK Anna Kournikova; cause it looks damned good but just doesn't win much! It's a nice STARTING hand!) Would I call an All-In first hand with it? Nope, no way! Would I call three All In's with a pair of 8's? Probably not. Would you? Didn't think so. (We're still talking first hand here.)

Bullshit #2: The Suck Out

I have never, ever seen more people call with the most bogus hands EVER as I do online. Bottom pair calling to the river (and I mean calling SERIOUS bets where they HAD to know they were dead meat) only to hit trips on the bloody river. Or they call a monster bet with a gutshot straight draw or a backdoor flush with their fucking 56 suited connectors (since when is a 6 high flush a GIVEN as the nuts???) and then hit with their 1 or 2 or 5 outer. Would you call a big bet with a 6 high flush? I would have to give that serious thought (based on betting patterns, etc.) COME ON!

OK, so this is the meat of my entire rant and the reason WHY PEOPLE SUCK playing poker. I had a conversation with one of my blogger buds a couple times about the number of suck outs he suffered to on PokerStars. He felt that FullTilt had a much better ratio which was closer to normal (read: 3D) play. I play on both PS and FT. So today I am playing on FullTilt (and thinking about my friend who likes FT better) and sure as shit, EVERY hand where I had callers, I got sucked out on. The only thing that held for me were my QQ where everyone folded to my bet (I had QQ twice...the only wins I got that whole tourney). Let me further say that I was not the only one who got sucked out on (and I am NOT talking about the good kind of sucking here! Sorry, I tangented there for a moment….mind in the gutter…nevermind!)

Anyway, as my theory goes, as people play online much more often than they do face-to-face, the number of suck outs they see and experience (being the sucker as well as the suckee - along with most people having no clue about statistical analysis and probability [ok, I am giving people way too much credit here], er, having no concept of OUTS), they EXPECT that the suckout is how poker works...that it is the rule, NOT the exception.

Coupled with that is TV. How many hours goes into creating one hour of television? Uhm, FIVE maybe? Five hours of FOLD, FOLD, FOLD. Fold to the BB. Fold to any bet. No, these Einstein's see the two hands out of two hours that makes good TV and think THAT'S HOW TO PLAY POKER!

So, now...let's couple these two pieces of total bullshit together and what do we get? We get people who call and go all in with nothing and suck out and think they are the next Erick Fucking Lindgren (I almost said Phil Fucking Hellmuth cause I liked the almost alliteration better but Erick Lindgren is so damned cute [not to mention having the sexiest voice on the planet - dude, would you PLEASE make an instructional tape for me...god I could go to bed with that voice every night.] Whooops, serious tangent there, sorry!!) because THEY WON A HAND. Yo, you dumb mutha fukka, YOU SUCK! You won cause you got lucky! Play for the next year and tell me how much in the hole you are...and FUCK YOU while you're at it ‘cause I KNOW that if I play in that rare cash game, you’re gonna suck out on me!! GRRRRRRRRRRR!

One of the poker commentators said this the other day: The All-In is the right strategy to use if you feel the other people at the table play better than you. Swell. Now they're teaching them that All-In is the way to win a hand you no way otherwise would have, right?

Not that I am the best poker player out there, HARDLY, HARDLY, HARDLY! But at least I understand the basic concepts and TRY to become better at my play! Do I make stupid bets and calls? Hell yeah!! (Although I try to keep those to when I feel desperate (seriously short stacked with an almost negative M [grin]) But I like to think that when I do make stupid moves I KNOW IT and I know why I did it and if I didn't at that moment, I thought about it and I learned from it!

Again, I ask...WHY DO I LOVE THIS GAME???????

{/rant off}

Living and Learning

I've been playing poker online more and more these days due to work constraints and other things happening in my life (that would probably be the extent of the Living part of the title of this post - I need a life, and no one wants to lease theirs to me, damnitall!!). I play with my blogger buddies a couple nights a week and, lately, I have been playing alot in those free Moneymaker tourneys on PokerStars. Can you say Donkfest at its finest? Yeah, thought you could. If it's not all-in every hand, it's calls down to the river with bottom pair (and hitting half the time) or the typical suck out that happens.

That said, I have played in a few of them (more for boredom than anything else) and actually made it into the triple digits (considering they start at around 5000 people, making it to 200 something isn't bad. By the time you get to around 1700 people, most of the true donks are gone and the lucky bastards left usually keep doing what they do and lose eventually anyway. So all in all, I consider it a good thing when I make it that far. I doubt I would ever do anything in any of those tourneys and I see it as practice and pass-time time. :)

Couple of great hands for me: I had Q9C and the board comesTJK (with the JK being suited hearts). Hmmm...I checked (and immediately regreted it after I realized that there were two hearts out there] but thankfully, the guy behind me bet so I was able to check-raise. He called. Turn is a blank, so I fire about 1/2 his stack and he calls again. River is a heart and now I am concerned. I bet 5k and he goes all in for about 8k more. I had about 18K left so...hmmm, what to do? I thought about how he bet. Would he have called and bet on the flop/turn on a draw?? After a while I called and my straight held (to his K7...yes, he called with top pair and followed it all the way down with a shit kicker [ok, I will give him credit that he maybe was trying to bluff me to thinking he was on that draw...who knows, maybe he was trying to bluff me with that draw - doofy, but I have seen much worse!]) And that was a very difficult call to make, let me tell ya.

And the point of that story is all about learning (which would be the Learning part of the title of this post). As a poker player, I am always looking to improve my game. I think about all kinds of things, but mostly, what I am doing poorly and what i need to improve on. There is one area I seriously need to improve on, and that's board and betting analysis. I suck at putting my opponents on their hands. It's not that I can't, it's more that I don't give myself time to think.

I have been blessed (or cursed) with a very sharp, quick mind and I am used to being able to assess situations, and make decisions, quickly. So, what I find myself doing is, making my poker decisions based on the board and my hand, and occasionally the opponents themselves. That's not to say I don't bluff sometimes or play aggressively, but generally, I play hands based on what I have and what I think they may have...but that's not enough. I need to do things like analyze the board and note all the hands that COULD beat me, then obviously think about what my opponents have, their betting patterns, and all that.

So...I need help. How do I retrain myself to not act so quicky? How do I train myself to remember all the things I know I need to do? I know there are only two or three of my fav poker players who actually read the drivel I write here, but if anyone has any suggestions, I would seriously appreciate assistance. If anyone has any bright ideas, email is VERY, VERY welcome!!

Thanks in advance to all of you who read this...you guys make my days sometimes. :)

XOX one and all!

p.s. My friend is en route from Iraq as I type - so this is for him. Godspeed to you, m'friend!! Thankfully, you are coming home in one piece and all my prayers and positive thoughts were to some avail. Thank you for what you did (there and before you went there) and what you will do when you return. God bless, babe!

No longer a virgin

Well, I got my first ever straight flush (king high, no less...still holding out for my first royal). A thing of beauty is a joy forever and that was both beautiful and joyful. That she had Kings full of Queens to my straight flush...so much the more beautiful and joyful. What a spectacular double up. That was orgasmic! Whew! I need a cigarette now!

Every Freakin' Time!

You know what's frustrating? When you make a good call (to a ridiculous overbet) and the asswipe sucks out on you. Why does it seem like every time. Last three times...I had them DOMINATED (KJ - K9, AK - A7, and on and on), made the right (and not too easy) call, and they suck out with their other freakin card. Jeez, I am gonna get a complex here soon! I don't know...maybe I am playing online too much...I so much prefer live to online but my life just hasn't allowed it lately.

This not only sucks, it swallows!

AAARRRRGGGGHHHH!

Repeat, repeat, who's got the repeat?

Sorry all...this continues to be my ultimate favorite post ever!! I have to keep repeating it 'cause I keep reading it! It's just too good to not keep active and out of the archive. AlCantHang...love it, babe! THANK YOU!

If you haven't read it, please do. If you have, read it again! It's soooooooooooooo worth it!!!

So, here's to you, you calling station, river lucky, donkey ass, SOB!

Click and look for Ode to a Lemur.

Enjoy!!

Ok, ok already - she's baaaaaaaaaack!

Due to popular demand (ok, well popular demand of one, but hey...I'll take a fan club no matter how small it is!! :-D) , I am again writing in my blog. To be honest, I didn't realize I have been so remiss in writing. Then again, I didn't realize that anyone actually read the drivel that I put on here...let alone wants more. GOD BLESS YA, BABE(S)! It's good to feel wanted (even if it is in my own mind...hey, gotta start somewhere)!

So, what has been happening in the life of Joanne? Lots and lots of travel for work. One trip, I had planned to hit a couple tourney's while up in Minnie-soooota - alas, that client is downtown and wouldn't give me a car. EXCUSE ME? NO FUCKING CAR? Good god, what is up with that! (Has anyone ever been to downtown St. Paul? They roll the sidewalks up at 4:00 pm. I went to Chipotle one day on my way back to my hotel after work [this is 4:30 in the afternoon] and they were closed! WTF???? Oh, and all the buildings have GUNS BANNED ON THESE PREMESIS signs. DOUBLE WTF!!!!!!!!! Not only could I not go anywhere, I didn't want to. If they have to have no gun signs, shit, send my ass home. I do not want to die in the great white north, eh?!?!) Anyway, suffice it to say that there was no poker in my future up there (and my internet connection blew, so all around, I felt like a fish out of water, floundering about hoping someone would toss a bit of water onto my poor little fish head, so I wouldn't die (OF BOREDOM! And maybe a little withdrawal...no poker for more than a week. I was looking so forward to tourney-ing in the casinos there, too.) If I never go back to MN again - that works!

I played online a couple weeks back. I love my Tuesday night online games...I play with some of the coolest, best, most fun people ever(!!!!) on Tuesday nights. I love these folks...but sometimes it's a dual edged sword to play with really good players. For when you return to playing in tourneys (either live or online), you go back to playing with donkeys who call you with 64o and hit...or they go All-In every hand when your JQo just doesn't look that good to an All-In bet. No matter, I love what I learn from these guys [that I don't do so badly, doesn't hurt my own sense of self either].

So, I am playing online a couple Tuesday nights ago and I had 9Qo. Flop comes TJK...I flop a K high straight. FLOPPED IT!! There are three of us: first position bets, I triple his bet, the last guy puts me (and position 1) all in - about 10x my reraise. Position 1 folds, and I call. Last guy has two pair and don't cha know it, rivers a boat on me. Buh bye Joanne. See ya next Tuesday night.

I played again last night. Didn't do too badly. Missed a good chance to push when I was short stacked. I had 89s but a raise and reraise before me came and I just didn't feel it, so I folded. I would have gotten a straight and took down the pot, trippling up. Alas. Took down a couple others and then went out in TJs several hands later. 12th place. DIDN'T EVEN BUBBLE! :-D Oh, well, I made a decent showing, and that worked.

I am going to be nutty busy with work soon. I have classes going on all next week (I teach computer configuration for a custom software app and do business consulting), a week off, then a conference in CA, work in Thailand, Dallas, and god only knows where else. Can you say SEE YA NEXT YEAR, Joanne? That's just about it. Thailand sounds kinda cool, though. Anyone been there? The client offered me a car/driver vs. renting my own vehicle. I am pretty adament about driving myself (St. Paul is still resonating in my brain - stuck in a hotel with nothing to do and nowhere close to go- my worst traveling nightmare. PLUS, I am gonna be in Thailand! I DON'T WANT TO SIT AROUND THE HOTEL ALL THE TIME!!!) Are any of my devout followers out there (I know, I know, all three of you!) familiar with driving in Thailand? Email me if you have any thoughts.

Ok, I posted something and will attmept to do so again before 35 (give or take a few) days rolls around. For those who missed me...AW! That's so darned sweet I could just spit! (huge sloppy kisses to ya! ok, ok, sans spit.)

Ciao ciao ciao for now now now!

J