Monday, April 18, 2005

I'm Officially A Poker Addict

My name is Larry and I am addicted to Party Poker.

I broke down and bought a 19" flat screen monitor that I can hook up to my laptop. I finally got it to work last night and played 2-4 hold'em for about an hour on 3 tables with virtually no overlap. I think Michele has finally realized the depths of my "sickness". Unfortunately, I finished the session down about $60, but I can't win every time.

I will have to figure out how to squeeze more tables on to my screens. I know there must be a way to 4 tables on the big screen alone without overlap. It probably has something to do with the resolution. I maxed it out to 1200X1080 ? and I at least got the tables the same size as the table picture on my laptop. I wish Party would just let us resize the damn windows, it would make life so much easier.

Saturday night was a great night of poker. I had played a few sit'n'gos during the day and won a little money. I am still toying with the more aggressive strategy of all in when stealing blinds. Michele decided to take a bath after we watched a movie together, so I thought I would take my shot at the Level 2 Step for the World Series of Poker. At step 2 the top 2 advance to the next level, 3 gets a little money and the chance to try again, and 4-7 go back to step 1. So obviously it makes sense to play very conservative until at least 3 people are out.

I did not start out well and was down to about 500 chips and there was only a couple people gone. I got to 500 by laying down a couple of hands with some good reads. Other players may have gone broke.

Finally I made it into the top 7 and the blinds had moved to 50-100. I started to catch some cards and doubled up a couple of times. When it got down to 4, we were all even with about 2500 chips a piece. This is another bubble level so you would be inclined to play careful. However the blinds are 100-200 so there is not a lot of room to screw around. I began to push all in whenever I got something playable and wouldn't you know it, I got called by better hands a couple of times. But I got lucky and sucked out. I lost a couple of battles with short stacks but nothing I couldn't recover from.

When it got to 3 players I figure that aggression is going to win the thing, so that's what I did. If it was folded to me in the small blind, I went all in. If I had a medium hand on the button, I pushed. They were so afraid of me in the big blind that they folded to me almost every time. I eventually busted out the last guy and it was down to 2.

My notes said that the top 2 advance but I wasn't 100% sure so I still played to win. I called a raise with 9-7 and flopped two pair. I pushed and he called with top pair and I won to move on to level 3.

Michele was already tucked in so I walked into the bedroom, declared myself as the best poker player in the universe and proceeded to ravish her under the covers. That my friends is a good Saturday night. Winning at poker, followed by great sex.

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