Why do all the trees point toward my house?

"They're too good and you suck something awful."
-- Patches O'Houlihan
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story

That's me, folks, sucking something awful since 2005.

I wasn't always a lousy poker player, but I am now. In fact, "lousy" is too kind.

My first-hand disaster in yesterday's blogger freeroll was just the tip of the iceberg. I couldn't post a winning session right now if the cards were dealt face-up and all my opponents were blind. I don't know if there is a way to lose money playing solitaire, but if there is, I'm certain to find it any day now.

What brought me to this lowly state, you might ask? Like I have a clue. Truthfully, I've been pondering that question ever since yesterday. I'm still drawing blanks -- which just so happens to be the perfect match to my game of late.

For those of you who enjoy taking a peek when you drive by a head-on collision, here's the blow-by-blow account of what happened. When I got my seat in the tournament, I noticed that my prediction that there would be a lot of "away" players was dead-on. Eight of the nine seats at my table were filled, but five of those eight were sitting out. I started out as the small blind. The only other two players at the table who were actually logged-on were the big blind and the guy directly across the table from me.

I picked up a 67off. Guy across the table raises the 10-20 blinds to 100. I'm immediately suspicious, thinking that he's noticed all of the away players and has decided to try to steal the blinds. I decide I'm going to defend my small blind, even though all I have is a lowly 67 out of position. The raise isn't that much, and I figure he wouldn't need much, if anything, to try to make a play in what is essentially a three-handed game. I call and hope to hit the flop hard or fold. The big blind folds.

The flop is a dream for me -- K67. I'm figuring his range of hands has to be something like AK, KQ, KJ, or maybe something that's missed the board completely, like AQ or AJ. So, to compound my error of playing a poor hand out of position, I decide to slow-play. I check. He checks.

The turn is a 9. His check makes me think he's completely missed the board, so I throw in a pot-size raise. He makes a minimum reraise. I think for a moment, but I can't put him on 8-10 or K9, so I figure to have him beat. I figure he's got to be holding AK or KQ, or maybe something like JJ or 10-10. I call.

The river is another dream, a 6, giving me a full house. I'm certain he could not have a K6 or 96. I'm getting ready to yell for the wife and kids to come look, because Daddy just doubled up on the first hand. I am starting to wonder what I will need to do to prepare for the tournament in the Bahamas, because Fate has her hand on my back, guiding me to the certain win.

I figure he'll fold if I make my move now, so I check, hoping to get him all-in. He takes a long time to act, and I'm certain that he is worried by that 6. I just hope he doesn't decide to check his two pair or whatever, or that he bets so small that he can get away easily when I reraise all-in. Finally, he bets 1,000, which is just shy of the 1,100 pot. I can't hit "raise" fast enough, which is only about 400 more, so I know he has to call.

Fate had her hand on my back all right, and then she jammed her finger up my ass.

Hard.

He turned over KK.

I'm not bemoaning my luck. I know I was stupid to play 67off in a raised pot anyhow. Sure, I based my actions on a limited amount of knowledge and arrived at a seemingly logical conclusion, and I never fault someone else for making a logical play, even if it turns out to be wrong. But lately, it seems that I am convincing myself to take unnecessary risks rather frequently. Instead of taking all I have learned about poker the past few years and using it to make sound decisions, I'm twisting it to justify making the wrong decision. That is so obvious in this case; I was perfectly willing to believe my opponent had a hand strong enough for me to trap, but I wouldn't allow myself to believe he had one strong enough to beat me.

Sure, it was only a freeroll. Sure, I didn't lose anything ... except I did. I went into yesterday's tournament fully expecting to win it. Nothing else was acceptable. Thus, with that mindset, I lost $12,000 yesterday, because I missed the opportunity to win $12,000. And maybe that isn't a healthy way to approach the table, either.

I cannot see myself returning to the tables anytime soon. Before yesterday, I was merely frustrated by my poor play of late. Now I am disappointed, disheartened, disillusioned, disgusted and dismayed. Poker remains a very big part of my life, but only as a railbird for now. I'll take my stabs at the occasional freeroll, maybe satisfy my urge to play by firing up the Xbox, but I cannot, in good conscience, allow myself to throw away my hard-earned money on a game I've seemingly forgotten how to play.

That's not to say I'm giving up the game for good, but right now I am in the wilderness as far as my development as a poker player is concerned. I've been saying I need a break from the game for some time, but, like I am prone to do at the tables lately, I have ignored my better judgment. It's time to change that, if I ever hope to improve as a player.

Oh ...

... my ...

... God!

4:00 p.m. -- Blogger tournament begins!

4:01 p.m. -- I'm done. I made a full house, he made a bigger one, end of story.

Busted out the very first hand. And I wasn't even the first. One other unfortunate sap went out ahead of me.

This truly, remarkably sucks something awful. If I wasn't so busy laughing at myself, I'd probably cry.

This one stung a little

Fifty-five players left in multi freeroll. Only top 40 get anything.

Me, around top 25 in chip counts. Not guaranteed to cash by a longshot, but feeling comfortable.

My better judgment, offering advice, "You know, you could just sit out right now and coast into the money."

My stubborn streak, "Don't listen to him. There's no glory in coasting. Go for the gusto!"

Me, big blind, AKs.

UTG, raise.

Cutoff, reraise.

My better judgment, vainly trying to get my attention, "Fold, dummy."

My stubborn streak, "Don't worry. Maybe they have a small pair, but probably not. They've probably each have a high ace also. At worst, you're tied with one of them, and at best, you've got them both dominated. And look at all that pretty money in the center of the table!"

Me, call.

Flop, AKJ.

Me, bet.

UTG, raise.

Cutoff, reraise all-in, has me covered.

Better judgment, screaming now, "FO-O-O-O-O-O-OLD!"

My stubborn streak, taking full command at this point, "Ignore him. You have TOP TWO PAIR! Of course you can't fold! What could they possibly have? They couldn't have called all that action preflop with a Q-10, so you don't have to worry about the straight. Of course, one or both could have trips ... No, that's not possible. You have this hand won, no question about it."

Me, call all-in.

UTG, call.

I show my top two pair.

UTG shows trip aces.

Cutoff shows trip jacks.

Dammit.

My better judgment, getting cocky now, "Told you so, but you never listen to me."

It's almost tourney time

Sunday will be the Pokerstars Blogger Championship and I can't help but feel a little giddy about it. I think I've just about shaken off the doldrums from earlier this week and will show up ready to play.

But I am somewhat at a loss for what to expect. This is a huge field and the "money" places aren't very deep, so anyone who wins anything will have to possess a rare combination of luck and skill on that day, or else just get stupid lucky like no one has since Robert Varkonyi.

But what will the actual play be like? Is this going to be your typical freeroll chock full o' asinine behavior, or will people approach this one a bit more seriously? I am tempted to think it will be the former, because Stars has opened it up to ALL bloggers, not just poker bloggers. That means that someone with an "I love kitty cats" blog has just as much opportunity to play, and I'm certain that a lot of dead money will be attracted to the table.

Now, I'm not saying that poker bloggers have the natural upper hand in this tournament (even though they probably do, because who plays, studies and obsesses about poker more than us?). But there are probably some good players out there who have other interests to blog about who will be showing up. I'm not thinking there will be too many, but they will be there. And there will be those who will get stupid lucky and knock some of the more formidible players out when they catch a two-outter on the river.

I think my approach to this tournament (because I'm feeling very serious about this) is going to have to be to play it very cautiously starting out. That means probably no bluffing until we're at least a couple of hours in, because I'm thinking a large number of the players will be unbluffable. (I've written about discovering the futility of doing that before.) Assuming there will likely be in the neighborhood of 1,600 players in this thing, I don't think we'll get down to playing any actual poker until we're down to 400 or so. Until then, I think the best strategy will probably be to play for survival and set small goals ... survive the first hand ... survive the first level ... survive until the first break ... survive until the second break.

Of course, the problem with that is that I've done it before, only to survive until crunch time and not have enough chips to make any moves, and bust out on the bubble when the blinds were threatening to knock me out. Obviously, assuming a somewhat novice field overall, I will have to really push to get maximum value on my premium hands. But premium hands will probably be scaled back quite a bit. Early on, I'm not planning to enter any big pots with anything less than QQ, certainly not AK.

(While writing this, I just busted out on the second hand of a lucky dollar tournament holding AK. The guy in front of me went all-in, I started to fold, because I am getting better about tossing "Anna Kournikova" in such situations, but then I thought, "Wait, this is a lucky dollar tournament. If he had AA or KK, he would almost be stupid enough to try to slow-play it even though there were four limpers ahead of him, so he probably has a small pair or a high ace. Whichever is the case, I'm almost certainly in the range of a coinflip dog or better. Plus I don't really care about losing my $1 investment. And I don't want to struggle through 682 person field just so I can bust out on the bubble, so I need to take a chance to build a big stack early. I know I shouldn't, but I'll just gamble and hope for the best." One other person also called, and I found myself up against 5-5 and 10-10. Obviously, I didn't improve.)

But, back to Sunday's tournament, that's the best plan I can think of without actually knowing what I will be facing. Of course, to be successful at poker (not saying I am ... yet), one has to adapt to circumstances on the fly. I might find that the tournament is completely different than anticipated, and if so I will have to alter my approach accordingly.

One other thing to consider about the tournament: I bet there will be a shitload of "away" players. For one, I figure there will be quite a few people who have signed up who don't really care about poker. They just saw something free, signed up, but then they'll find something else to do, or they will forget all about it. Two, if this latest hurricane hits by Sunday, then there will probably be a sizable number of people without power, meaning they can't get in to play. That always figures to dictate a change in strategy, because if you do have lot of people posting and folding, you are pretty much playing a short-handed tournament. That could make things interesting. And wouldn't it be great to show up and find that you've been placed at a table where you're the only person who isn't away?

Come on, you know you want it

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Ask and ye shall receive

So, in my whine the other day, I believe I said that playing a break-even game is the worst possible scenario for a poker player. Of course we all want to win, but I said that even losing is preferrable that a long streak of breaking even. Give me either, I said, and I would be happy.

Presto! I got my wish. Now I have a whopping $2 left in my Poker Room account after an extended evening of much crying and gnashing of teeth.

Thankfully, I've not depleted the entire bankroll, like I did last year. But I am sooooooo frustrated and burnt-out. And that's not a good mental state to be in with the blogger tourney coming up this weekend. I would really like to do well in that, mostly because there's just all sorts of nifty prizes to be had, any one of which would make me happy. But if I can't improve my state of mind between now and then, I have the feeling I'll just end up donating my stack within the first half-hour, but not before telling the beneficiary of my largesse to go ____ himself.

How bad is it? Well, when is the last time you've won a SNG and been completely pissed off about it? When my final opponent typed in the inevitable "gg" at the conclusion, I was tempted to type back, "not in the slightest." But then I remembered I was at the site where I'm a prop player and one of their rules is that you have to be nice to everybody, no matter how freaking stupid they are.

You see, here's what happened. I was fortunate enough to get great cards throughout the tournament, plus I feel like I played them well to boot, so that when half the players were gone, I already had over half the chips on the table. When we got down to heads-up, I had a 10-to-1 chip lead. First hand heads-up, my opponent moves all-in. I forget what I had, but it was neither spectacular nor vomit-enducing, and since I already had one-third of his bet in the pot as the big blind, I decided to call, hope to get lucky and be done with it. Well, he was of course ahead in the hand and I never improved, so he doubled up. Next hand, he went all-in again, and the next, and the next. Clearly, his strategy was evident by this point. He was hoping to get stupid lucky. I tried making some preflop raises when I did have decent hands, trying to slow him down, but he'd invariably move all-in again and I would have to fold. Finally, he had chipped away at me until my lead was only 2-to-1, and I admit I was getting pissed. Finally, I thought, "Fine, you want to play like a donkey? I can, too," and I pushed all my chips in holding a Q6. He types in, "Oh well, why not," and calls, holding Q10, and I lost the lead. Next hand, he limps and I move all in again, holding something like J3. He called again and I didn't even bother waiting to see what happened while I went to the bathroom. When I got back, I'd somehow won the hand, and it was on me to act again. All-in again and I won again and the tournament was over.

So, why get mad about it? Well, on top of the frustration I'm already feeling, I just felt cheated once a tournament I'd played so well in became a "who can get luckiest" contest. When I play cards, money is really only a secondary consideration for me. I want to play well. Without really meaning to, I've actually come to the point where my goal has become to make the best decisions possible, each and every hand. So I suppose I was angry because I felt I had been robbed of that, and also that my opponent showed no respect for either me or the game by giving me his best game (although I suppose it could be argued that his "strategy" was apparently working).

I don't know why I allow myself to get like this, but when it happens, I can sort of relate to Phil Hellmuth (who we got to see lose his chance for a 10th bracelet last night, while at the same time all but clinch the Biggest Asshole Award). Someday, though, I'm going to learn to get away from the game before the game gets away from me. When I come back from a break, I usually go on a tear at the tables, mopping up every chip put before me for a period of 3-to-6 weeks. After that, my game starts fading, and I'll be a little less profitable for awhile, then break-even for awhile, and finally my bankroll develops anemia and I bleed chips all over anybody who even gets near me.

You want to know a secret? Here's how you can tell if you're about ready to lose your ass at the poker table. If you are gritting your teeth when you sit down to play, it's pretty much over for you. You'd be better off cashing in your chips and writing a big check to hurricane victims or little kids with cancer. Either way, you're going to be donating.

Obviously, someone is long overdue to take a break from the game.

Poker Purgatory

Groan ... The last few weeks I have seemingly been consumed with staging my own impersonation of Sisyphus at the poker tables, trying to push that rock up the hill, never quite getting there. I shouldn't complain, because things could always be worse. I could be losing, for example. But like the saying goes, the next best thing to playing cards and winning is playing cards and losing. If you wanted to posit a corollary to that statement, you could probably start by noticing how breaking even doesn't figure anywhere into the equation.

Playing break-even poker is probably one of the torments reserved for some of the darkest pits of hell. If you play and win, well, everything is dandy. But even if you play and lose, you're at least going somewhere, even if it isn't where you want to go. Breaking even, however, is like standing at attention for hours on end. Weeks, in my case.

Lately, it seems like there are only two scenarios available to me at the poker table: either lose a sizable amount early and struggle to get it back, or win a sizable amount early and watch it eventually disappear. And that just sucks. Really. Winning and losing are their own reward. If you win, you have the satisfaction of knowing that you are accomplishing something. If you lose, you can generally take solace in that you are paying a price to learn. Or if you're playing well and still losing, you can take comfort in knowing that your good decisions are preventing you from losing even more. WTF am I supposed to take away from a string of break-even sessions?

Then again, I have found that, for me, these periods when I feel like I'm running in place are usually a precursor to some breakthrough moment. I'll be grinding it out, growing more and more frustrated by my inability to do anything, when suddenly I learn something about the game that I hadn't realized before, something that enables me to go on a tear at rack up some chips. I just hope it comes soon ... particularly before the blogger tourney this Sunday.

The Special Olympics of Poker

With the wife still away down south volunteering in the Hurricane Katrina mess, it's sort of imperative to keep a phone line open at the house so she can call. Unfortunately, I live in the sticks, where DSL and cable internet access are nonexistent, so that pretty much means laying off the poker playing quite a bit.

That's a conundrum in and of itself, but especially lately. Having signed up to play in the PokerStars blogger tourney, and wanting to do well in it, I've been wanting to get some practice in a few multis, which I don't usually play. I prefer to stick to cash games or SNGs. Of course, it's kind of hard to play in one if I can't get online, so I thought I would do the next best thing and picked up a copy of the World Series of Poker video game for Xbox. Actually, given my druthers, I would have rather gotten Stacked, Daniel Negreanu' game, because I've heard of a lot of good things about it, namely that its AI learns your style of play and adopts a counter-strategy. But it's not out yet, so I figured the WSOP game would be a good substitute.

Unfortunately, it's not. This game's AI suffers from major brain damage. Raise 4xBB in the main event and just watch as six people call with such spectacular holdings as J4. In other words, it's just like playing an online play money game.

To make matters worse, it isn't really a simulation at all. For instance, during the course of one hand, I decided to pause the game and look at the tournament leader board, which shows the top eight or ten chip stacks, to see how I stood. I was sitting on a stack of $27,000 at the time, which was good enough for fifth place at that point, with first place somewhere around $29,000. When I returned to the game, that particular hand turned out to be a huge one for me, and I had increased my stack to $41,000. As soon as I raked the chips, I paused the game, eager to see my name at the top of the leader board, but I wasn't even on the list. Instead, first place had grown to $48,000 and the bottom stack on the list was $45,000. Oh yeah, that's realistic. The game was just manipulating the size of the chip stacks in order to make the game more challenging.

Okay, I know I sound a little nuts right now, complaining, in so many words, that "video game poker is rigged!" But that's not what I'm getting at. I'm just disappointed that this game isn't going to give me a realistic simulation for honing my skills. It should be plenty of fun for the casual poker player who wants to play pretendsies, but it is next to worthless for a serious player. It is most certainly not a poker tool, but instead Space Invaders with playing cards. If you're looking for a risk-free way to work on your game, you could do much better spending more money to get a copy of Wilson Turbo or DD Tournament Poker. Even though I don't think either of those provide very realistic play from your competition either, they're not quite as retarded as the WSOP game. Or you might want to wait until Stacked is released, assuming it lives up to the hype.