Some grease for this grind...

The Bodog account is now up to $117.xx. No that's not stellar, I realize, to have moved from 110-ish to 117-ish last night BUT if you'd seen the majority of the cards that I was seeing in last night's session you'd give me credit for moving up at all. Lots of dismal cards from every position last night. And when I would get some feeble little pocket pair, like 3's or 5's from late position, there would invariably be a raise and a re-raise if not more before it got to me. There were nut-jobs at the table pushing $10+ preflop to steal the blinds, which I'll remind you were 5cents and 10cents! I was seeing 3 and 4 people move all-in preflop, with absolute crap hands. So, it was time just to lie in wait. I made some colossal good lay downs too. I waited for better positions, and better days, and watched my statistics take a nose dive. I'm down to a 10% win when dealt cards. I'm seeing the flop only 31%, winning at showdown 60%, and winning when seeing the flop at like 27%. I find that when a table temporarily disintegrates that these uber fast hand cycles tend to skew the stats something fiercely. You're in every hand, raising and bluffing to steal, and dropping when you feel your beat. A few of these rounds will start the stats to spinnin'. Anyway, I did have some good hands too. But there were a number of times when after the flop I was forced to lay down pockets, and AK and AQ. I was beat and knew it. I resisted the urges most of the time to get in there on coin flips. The outlandish play was liable to hit whatever crap boards were coming out. There were times that I kicked myself when I'd folded preflop, when I would have hit BUT more often than not, had I stayed in with my hole cards, I would have gotten coolered by the nuts that someone else was holding. It was uncanny! But put a smile on my face, since I stayed out! I made one mistake as far as I can tell and it wasn't overly costly. I tried to slow play flopped trips, when two 10's hit the board, matching my 10-J nicely. My opponent hit runner, runner, runner flush on me, and I got off easy, only having to pay him off an additional 75cents-ish for it. Lucky there. If he'd popped it, I'd have passed, and I believe that. I did hit a straight flush on a hand, and it took me a while to figure that out. I had to double take on it. The pot had grown to like $4.80 with me and a couple of other guys in the hand. When I realized I'd rivered the SF, I had to do a double take. Then, thinking (hoping) that one of them had the ACE, I popped it hard, hoping to get paid off. Someone must have smelled the rat, but I did take down the pot. Surprisingly to me, I resisted getting into coin flips most of the time except for twice! I was being slapped around at the table, by guys who thought I was week, but I really wasn't getting the cards. Then for some reason, I "felt" something and decided to go for it on a hand. Granted it was AQc, but the $2.00 preflop bet put me off a little, since I'd been seeing this stupidity too much. Granted it's just 2 bucks but this is a LOWLY BUY-IN table folks. That's 1/5 of the BI! But I felt it was time...and also wanted to diffuse my chicken little image at the table. I called him down, and he flipped over pocket 10's I hit two Queens before the dust settled and took the pot and sent him to the rail. Now the other hand felt even better. There was this guy with some "camel-jockey" type name, with the face of some wild-eyed Arab as his avatar, who was playing like he'd declared a jihad against every stinkin' American at the table. (Granted he was probably some high school punk, stateside, but the whole thing left me, wanting to bust his ass.) He kept raising preflop, playing his position at times, other times, just for kicks. He wasn't getting that many winning hands that often. He was just a punk, trying to be table bully. So I'm the big blind, and look down at A-2 sooted! : ) Meek little, play me fer cheap hand! Of course, it gets around to him and he pops it, for his usual amount, and I hesitate for a moment, and decide WTF, just once! I flop two pair...and coyly check it. He fires $1.50, which I double, which puts me close to all-in at that table, which I'd been running horribly on. He mashes the button, for all-in. If he's made his set, then so be it...hang on kids, here we go. Well he didn't...he'd hit the Ace with a 10 kicker. Not a terrible hand, maybe I should have given him more credit. But he didn't double pair, and I took the pot...and he had to rebuy. He stopped his "raisy-daisy" ways, and I got a handle on the table, got back to even + the aforementioned $7-ish, and made my exit stage left. Thankful to be up...more thankful not to have gotten stuck for both my table buy-ins. I'm sure some would not approve of my tighter-than-tight approach, but I'm rebuilding...and frankly I'm climbing albeit slowly. However, these paltry little sums are significant when weighed against the $10 max buy-in. So, I'm trying to think in terms of chips, or units of betting, and not the "true" dollar amounts. It's keeping me sane, and improving my play, I think. Others would argue I'm not seeing enough flops, and I'm not gambling enough. I'm not sure how I feel about that anymore. I still don't like to think of poker as gambling. Calculated risk yes, but not out and out gambling. I'm more apt to try and avoid the coin-flips. There are MUCH better opportunities which present themselves at the table. I'm trying to seize upon these moments for now. Hey, if I can get the Bodog roll up to $400-$500, sure we'll talk, but until then I really can't and won't grant myself the luxury. This is a new disciplined approach to the game. And you can be damn sure there will be NO ONLINE BLACKJACK in the mix again...ever! I really mean that this time. I'm not going to forgive that indiscretion. It cost me in terms of blackjack losses and the tilt factor that compounded poker losses, well it was just fargin' stupid...just bad business. Time to play on the belly for while, and literally GRIND it out. Some of you aren't willing to grind out this low and slow...I am, get over it. It'll pay off, further on down the line.

Until then, I'll be the one rolling change to take to the cashier's window!

Regards,

cheer_dad