Being Unlucky is NOT Fun!

I had my great roll, so I suppose I'm due for a few crappy beats, but I still do not like it one little bit.

Sunday night I had about 3200 chips with the blinds at 100-200 and the break coming up in about 5 minutes. The blinds would then be 200-400, so I would only have about 8 times the big blind. I had taken a few smaller pots and had been playing well and folding a lot. I was on the button when I saw the pocket kings - one heart and one diamond. Yippee! There was already $1100 in the pot (300 blinds and 4 limpers @ 200 each). I did not want any of them who might have an ace to call me so I made a raise to 1000, which was almost one-third of my chips.

The small blind (and massive chip leader) did the scary double-raise thing, making it 2000 to go. Everyone folded back to me. I simply went all-in. It was the right move. My woman's intuition told me I had the best hand and I was right. He groaned quite loudly when he saw my kings and he turned over pocket queens - one spade and one club. However, his tune changed when he hit running spades and knocked me out with a flush on the river. Ouch! He said, "I was hoping you had A-K". I quite honestly told him that I would never put my tournament on the line with that piece of limburger. He was appropriately chastised. :) Anyway . . . so it goes.

Last night I was absolutely card dead for one entire hour and had only entered 2 pots, once with K-J and once with K-10, which were the best cards I had seen. I had to eject both hands immediately after crummy flops. I finally had my chance when there were again 4 or 5 limpers and I looked down to see A-8 in the small blind. I had only 1200 left and it went in the middle. Everyone folded except A-5 suited in hearts and, yes, you guessed it - running hearts and I was flushed again. Good grief.

My only consolation is that I was patient and played well and went all-in with the best hand both times. There's not much else I can do except get lucky "one time"!!

I Must Be Doing Something Right

I took 2nd last night at the Cable Bridge, which was good for $200 (only a $15 tournament, so not a bad profit). I only had $2700 coming back from the first break with blinds of 200-400. I got up to over 12,000 very quickly. I even knocked out 2 players while holding 2-2. Good grief. Then I made a bonehead move when I check-raised a guy with a paired board and I was holding the nut flush. He had a full house. OUCH!

After that fiasco I tightened up considerably and was almost out until I picked up the rockets in the big blind. I said, "Oh, darn" and called two all-ins and my hand held up - yeah!! I could have split with the eventual winner and picked up an extra $50, but I really like head's up practice and that's just the way it goes. As usual, I went in with the best hand (A-10 of spades) and got beat (8-7 offsuit). Oh well! :)

I Am Semi-Famous :)

I wrote an email to poker professional Susie Isaacs after reading her book "Queens Can Beat Kings". She actually wrote me back and now my email is on her blog. You should check it out. Her blog address is www.susieisaacs.blogspot.com. What a thrill! Right under it is a fun post she wrote about splitting prize money. Kids these days.

I was on such a roll, but I got sort of stupid on Tuesday. I decided to play one of those dumb free rolls they have at the Crazy Moose because you can qualify for a super satellite to play each and every tournament at the Fall Poker Roundup in Pendleton. Before the tournament, I did very well in the 3-6 game, earning $140 profit between 5:30 and 8:00. The tournament was the fiasco I thought it would be and I was out fairly early when my pocket 7s got beat by a set of 5s on the river. Ouch. None of this was too awful, but then instead of going home (as I knew I should have) I went over to the Cable Bridge to try the $2-$40 spread game for the first time at that establishment.

I played well but never really had a profit of more than $40 and I think I was a little under my initial $200 buy-in. I was just about ready to go home and decided to limp in with pocket twos. The flop was 9-3-2 with two hearts. Sweet. I was playing with Sam (young tattooed kid, very nice) and Frank (used to be "Woodstock" until the hair cut). I was first to act and I actually bet $7. Sam raised to $17. Frank re-raised to $37. Red flags should have gone up, but they didn't. I just knew I had the best hand. I put Sam on a flush draw and Frank on an over-pair. In hindsight this was wishful thinking on my part. All I did was call the re-raise.

The turn brought a blank. I checked. Sam checked. Frank bet $40. I raised to $80. Sam folded. Frank re-raised and by that time I only had $3 left and it all went in. He had a set of threes . . . cry . . . sob . . . moan . . . good-bye. I had fun though and I guess I really should have known he had a hand like this, but it surprises me that he was so aggressive with it after I re-raised him on the flop because I could easily have had a set of 9s. Oh, well. Better luck next time.

And The Hits Just Keep on Coming!

As you know, I was so tired on Sunday night that I should have stayed home. However, Monday turned out to be another good day. I played the little $15 Cable Bridge Tournament and yours truly now has a seat at the Tournament of Champions on July 5. That is the 4th of July weekend so I'm hoping for a semi-small turnout so I can crush them!! Ha! I chipped up very early in this one and was never in any real danger. It was kind of boring actually. Did I say that out loud! :)

Best Poker Weekend Ever - Part Five

I was SO tired on Sunday morning, but because I was already up thanks to my worthless yet loveable kitty cat, I went on down to the Crazy Moose for the 10:00 a.m. tournament anyway. I ended up splitting first 3 ways and took $390.

My favorite and luckiest hand was when "Triple Gutter" called my all-in with A-10 off. I had pocket nines. This was near the end of the tournament when only 6 of us were left. A ten hit on the flop . . . sob . . . cry . . . moan. A nine hit on the turn . . . jump up and down . . . do the wave! Yippee! He wasn't out, but he was crippled and he was gone on the very next hand. It was pretty easy from there.

Did I go home and take a nap? Hell, no. I had to do laundry (but not fold it) and go grocery shopping and make dinner, etc. My really wonderful poker weekend ended on the same note as it began - with a loss in the Cable Bridge 7:00 tournament. In hindsight, however, I never should have played this tournament because I was simply exhausted and I was not thinking very clearly and I played very badly as a result. I was home and sound asleep before 9:30.

Before ending, I must give a lot of credit to poker professional Susie Isaacs. I took many a day off in the past few weeks and some of that time was spent reading her book, "Queens Can Beat Kings". I learned the five "P"s of poker and really worked on them and I honestly think I play a better game now. Unless you read her book, these weapons (the 5 Ps) shall remain my little secret - ha!

All-in-all, I have to say that this weekend was my best ever. I sure wish life was perfect and would allow this type of poker weekend a little bit more often.

Best Poker Weekend Ever - Part Four

After I took $200 out of the free roll tournament, I decided to do something I hardly ever do any more - play in the cash game - because it was FREE. I played 3-6 for about 20 minutes and then discovered that the 2-40 spread limit game had become a 2-20 spread limit game, which I like better. I proceeded to play from about 9:30 p.m. until almost 3:00 a.m. Yawn! I was seated directly behind a very drunk guy and a guy who was annoyed by the very drunk guy who kept re-raising him, so I was pretty much able to play like a rock, which (go figure) allowed me a small $50 profit on the evening. On top of that, however, I got quad twos for $237 on the monte carlo board. Whee!!

As indicated, I went home very early in the morning and pretty much decided not to play the 10:00 a.m. Sunday tournament at the Moose because I like to have plenty of rest before playing. However, my stupid cat decided to pick that night to bug me and be mad at me for leaving her alone all day and she raced around my small apartment all night banging into the blinds and playing with her toys and I might have gotten 3-4 hours of sleep - maybe.

So, because I was sort of awake anyway, off to the Moose I went . . . TO BE CONTINUED . . .

Best Poker Weekend Ever - Part Three

I made it back to the Crazy Moose with only about 10 minutes to spare before the 40-person final of the $1,000 free roll. As expected, there were a lot of the regular players that I consider to be good players in the final, so I knew I would have my work cut out for me. I do not really remember anything too exciting about this tournament, other than the fact that I was very happy to make it to the final table with a very healthy chip stack.

We took a break right before the final table and when we returned, it was suggested that we all take $100 and call it good. I think there were two of us who declined. I was one of them. I gave this little short speech about how I knew it was free, but I still wanted to give it my best shot and if I got knocked out before the money, that was my choice. For some reason, I just didn't feel that $100 was enough for outlasting 55 people in the qualifier and another 30 in the final so I stuck to my guns. I think a couple of people were annoyed by this, but oh well. I was not the only player who felt this way, but I was definitely in the minority.

We played for about another 30-45 minutes after the break and were down to five players with pretty even chip stacks when the suggestion was made to take $200 each. We all agreed to that, mainly because the blinds were soon to be 10,000 and 20,000 and it was just getting to the point where you had to go all-in and take your chances, no matter what your chip stack was. So, we took a 5-way split. Not bad money for a freebie! TO BE CONTINUED . . .

Best Poker Weekend Ever - Part Two

I left the Crazy Moose and drove to Richland to play in the 12:30 p.m. deep stack tournament at Joker's. This was definitely the best that I have ever played in this tournament to date and I was absolutely crushing people left and right in the beginning. At the end of 2 hours I had almost 80,000 in chips. That was the good news. At the end of 3 hours, I had hardly any chips. I do not believe that the loss of chips was due to any terrible play on my part however, just bad luck. I also had amazing good luck later as you will see!

I made a terrific comeback in this tournament. With the blinds at 3000 and 6000, I was down to my last 8000 in chips, 6000 of which were in the blind already. I went all-in after looking at only one of my cards, which turned out to be my favorite card, the ace of spades. As in the earlier tournament at the Moose, I had about six callers, so there was about 45,000 in chips in the main pot. At the end, I turned over my ace of spades and was amazed and delighted to find the ace of diamonds right next to it! Wow! I was even more amazed and delighted to win the pot! Yessir, it's hard to keep this old girl down.

Shortly thereafter, we were down to 4 players and one of them went all in for just about all of my chips. Again, I looked down and saw pocket aces. Unbelieveable. Naturally, I called. My face dropped and the other player jumped out of his chair when a king hit the turn. My face got supremely excited and he walked away when an ace hit the river. I had such luck in this tournament - you wouldn't believe it. I had pocket aces twice and they held up both times when I desperately and absolutely needed them too. I had pocket kings SIX times and never lost with them. I was a total luck box in this tournament.

Not to pat myself on the back too much or anything, but I also think I played really well. Proof of this is the fact that I played head's up for nearly one full hour before ending up in second place. We battled so long because there was a tournament of champions seat on the line. I'm sure either one of us would have been happy to make a deal if that were not the case. The other guy (Terry somebody-or-other) simply got tired of trying to "felt" me I think because he called my final all-in with the 2-3 of diamonds and said, "It will probably take junk like this to win" and it held up when he caught a pair of twos and my ace-queen died on the vine.

I won $420 for second place. Even after deducting my buy-in and a $35 tip, I made $59 per hour. Not too shabby. The tournament lasted from 12:30 until almost 6:00, which was a new record for longest deep stack tournament at Joker's by over 30 minutes. Very cool. I decided that even though I was pretty worn out by this tournament, I would still go back to the Moose and play the 40-person final free roll. I barely had time to grab a bite at McDonald's and hit the road back to Pasco. TO BE CONTINUED . . .

Best Poker Weekend Ever - Part One

I guess taking a break is good. The first part of my best poker weekend ever did not encourage me to believe that anything had changed. I played the $25 Crazy Moose Saturday morning tournament, even though I said I would not play 10-minute blind round tournaments anymore. Bad girl. I did OK for a while, but ended up having to go all-in with pocket queens, which is not a problem, but Dusty called with A-K and spiked a king, so I was done.

As I was just about to leave, someone (I think it was Roland) asked me if I was going to play the free roll and I said I didn't really care for them. He said it was "customer appreciation day" and that there was a special free roll with prizes of $500 for first, $300 for second and $200 for third. There was a 10:00 flight and a 3:00 flight. The top 20 from each flight would come back to play a 40-person final at 7:00. I decided to try it. What the heck. I went grocery shopping and came back by 10:00.

Thus began my wonderful poker weekend, although I did not know it at the time because my tournament did not start out very well. I simply caught no cards at all and was down to only 600 fairly quickly. Yikes. Under the gun I stared at pocket rockets. 99% of the time I would raise with these little beauties, but I was desperate and so I limped in. I got SIX callers. Help!

Someone raised in late position and that put me all-in. I called and we still had five players to the flop. Unbelievably, my aces held up and I was off and running. I ended the flight as one of the top 20 with 7,000 in chips, which was about average. We carried our chips to the final table and the blinds would start at 100-200, so I felt very comfortable.

Now, my only problem was, what to do with time to kill from 11:50 a.m. until 7:00 p.m. Off to Joker's I went for the 12:30 $60 deep stack. TO BE CONTINUED . . .

Free Ladies Tournament

I played the free ladies only tournament at the Islands Casino last night for the second week in a row. I went out fairly early last week because I screwed up big time. Last week on the very first hand I limped in with A-3 clubs. That was my first mistake. I shouldn't have played a weak ace to begin with, suited or not. Then there were 2 clubs on the flop, giving me 4 to the flush, so I called the original bettor's $200 bet. That was OK. I got stupid on the turn when I ended up with 4 to the flush AND an open-ended straight draw, which if you know me, I knew I would never hit, but I decided to raise anyway, so I blew off another $600 chips. Then I got supremely stupid when the original bettor checked the river to me and I could have checked, but I hit none of my draws so I bet another $600 trying to get her off top pair. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Anyway, I went out shortly thereafter because I never saw any decent cards after that and ended up going all in with another A-3 that wasn't suited and got beat by a pair on the river. Ouch!

Last night was much better. I played very well and didn't make any stupid calls or raises. I even won with my pocket kings. Imagine that! No aces to be seen anywhere - a miracle! Even though I played well, I was down to 1200 chips with the blinds at 300-600 and a 100 ante, so I pushed all-in with 10-6 clubs. I got called by A-K. I hit 2 pair and I was right back in it. It ended up with three of us having pretty equal stacks and just passing our chips around for 15 minutes, so we decided to split three ways. It was only $83 each because there were only 25 players to start, so they only paid $125-75-50, but hey, it didn't cost anything, so that was fine with me. The other ladies were great fun and pretty poker savvy, so it was a good time. I'll have to do it again.