This and that

I intended to play the WWdN Tuesday, but I had to work late and didn't get home until after game time. I donked my way through the first half hour of The Mookie on Wednesday. Should have worked late that night too. At least I wasn't the one Hoy was ranting about on Thursday, though I did have to go check the hand history to be sure. Nah, wasn't me, and didn't sound like me from the rant anyway. As bad as I did play, I didn't call an all-in with AJo.

I was all set to play CC's Thursday Bash last night, but I couldn't find it. Not sure if it's dead or just on a semi-regular schedule. If I thought anybody would show up I'd start up the WWdNot again.

If you play any live poker, you should seriously consider picking up "Read'em and Reap" by Joe Navarro with minimal help from Phil Hellmuth. "Caro's Book of Tells", as good as it is, pales in comparison to "Read'em and Reap". At least that's what it seems from just reading it. I haven't had an opportunity to put it into action yet.

Joe Navarro is a career FBI agent specializing in non-verbal communication. This guy can read body language -- the often very subtle type that indicates our TRUE emotions -- like it's a newspaper headline. In this book he divulges many of the secrets of this art. Considering it's only $13 from Amazon, if you win one pot as a result of reading this book you'll likely be money ahead.

I wrote previously about a tournament I played at the Hard Rock in Tampa where one guy practically disappeared into himself after pushing all-in. At the time I applied the weak-is-strong principle. This guy couldn't have possibly looked any weaker without breaking into tears. So I folded. After reading most of Navarro's book I'm now convinced this was a totally wrong read of the situation. In this case, weak was weak. This guy was scared to death somebody was going to call his all-in. I don't recall what I was holding, so it's possible I couldn't have called him anyway, but I'm pretty sure he was nowhere near as strong as I thought at the time.

Last night I played some more limit at PokerStars. I'm not really working on my remaining bonus -- I've got another five months before it expires -- but I wanted to see how much of an impact my Silver Star 50% point bonus would make on my VPP rate. The 1/2 tables were so bloody tight I couldn't tell any difference at all. 165 hands and I earned all of 62 VPPs. Considering the 50% bonus, that means it was only 41 base PPs. Fewer than 25% of the hands resulted in pots over $10. That's pathetic even at 1/2.

If nothing else, the UIGEA has made it almost impossible to find a decent game of limit online. It looks like all the purely recreational players have taken up other pursuits and left online poker to the dedicated few. The blinds are going to eat us all alive if this is truly the case. I wonder if places like Pacific Poker are as fishy as they have historically been. They always seemed to draw more players from outside the US. I'll bet the GBP tables at the Cryptos have gotten soft again too.

On the plus side for me, last night was the first clear winning session I've had in what seems like ages. Maybe the luck has finally started to even out.