Random thoughts from Bad Poker Weekend

Saturday night and I am sitting home alone. Michele has a housewarming party on the west side of town to attend that I am lucky enough to be able to stay home. My only chores are to finish the last load of laundry, vacuum the living room, and clean my mail off the kitchen counter. Overall a 1/2 hour of work. My main focus will be playing online poker.

Usually when I have 5-6 hours of uninterrupted poker time, I will thrive. Tonight I will have no such luck.

Earlier on Satuday I signed up for Noble Poker using the link from Iggy's blog. I put in the max so I could get my 100% bonus. So $500 is tied up in the site. The graphics look good, but I don't think the software is better than Party. For one, I have yet to figure out if you can take notes on players. I like the chat being in a long window on the side, so it's easier to figure out what happened earlier in the hand.

The main problem, as with most of the sites is lack of traffic. There are only 1-2 full games of 1-2 or 2-4 going during prime time. According to the bonus details I think I am going to have to play approximately 2000 hands to reach my bonus. This will be very time intensive if I can only play one table at a time. Of course it will be worth the aggravation if I win the blogger WSOP tournament on Wed.

So the plan on Saturday was to have one window open with Noble Poker working off the bonus and a Party window open playing $33 sit n go's. The sits were painful. After 4 tournaments, my best finish was 4th. It seemed like every time I got a strong starting hand and raised, the flop missed. So I would get to the 4th level of 50-100 blinds and be left with 500 chips. Then it was all in mode and I was not getting very lucky.

For variety I tried a $22 multi table NL tournament. There were 1700 entries and the top ten is where you make any serious money. For once I tried to play aggressive at the start instead of really tight. My plan was, to play QQ, KK, or AA for all my chips preflop if possible and try to double up. If I have top pair with K or A kicker, do the same. Try to build up a big stack quick and then use it to punish the smaller stacks.

There were a couple of crazy plays early from people who obviously had the same idea. About 12 hands in I was dealt QQ. There was a small raise in front of me, and I just doubled it, looking for some action. Behind me another guy went all in for my whole stack. The original raiser called. I decide to call. Great maybe I'll triple up.

First all in guy turns over JJ. Second all in guy turns over Ace Queen. This looks good! Of course another Jack hits the flop and I go out after 15 minutes of play.

Now I'm a little mad. Earlier in the night I had signed up for the WSOP step 4 tournament. I was the first one at the table and I assumed that it would take an hour or so to fill up. In the mean time I started another $33 sit n go.

This one, I busted out with AK all in vs AQ. My King hit on the turn but it gave my opponent the straight and I was out in 5th. After I say yes to my summary, another window pops up asking if I want my summary for the WSOP tournament. What the fuck!? I click back and it says I finished 6th. My computer never beeped at me and the window never pinged up to the front the whole time. I missed the whole damn tournament! Fuck! Now I am back to level 2.

I decided to quit after that. No point in blowing off more chips if it's not your night.

PS. I played one $33 sit n go the next night (Sunday) and won. All is well in Larry land. Vegas is now only 5 days away.