Dreary Saturday

A lot of rain fell from the sky today, much of it apparently landing right on my game. It being rather nasty outside, I found myself sitting around doing not much when time for Dr. Pauly's PLO tournament rolled around. My Omaha game still sucks, but I decided to play anyway.

I played a bit of NLHE while waiting for the tournament to start. Dropped $0.30. No biggie.

I feel so out of my element with PLO. I just kept trying to remember that Omaha is a game of the nuts. If I wasn't holding something very, very close to the nuts, I got out of the way. I'm pretty good at that, getting out of the way. I actually did sort of okay. Played very tight and managed to outlast about two-thirds of the field, almost enough to make the final table.

Unfortunately, the chip leader, who was really the chip leader, was taking good advantage of his advantage. His stack just kept getting bigger and bigger. The blinds eventually started catching up and I was forced to play some very marginal hands. Nothing much came through. I finally had to push it all in with a so-so hand with a lot of possibilities. Somebody had something just a bit better and none of my draws hit.

Later in the evening I decided to play some more NLHE. I should have watched a movie. It was one of those sessions where absolutely nothing hit. If I had good starting cards and bet, two people would irrationally come along, I'd miss, and one of them would river something to beat me. If I had something marginal and folded, the poker gods would taunt me by showing me I'd have flopped a full house if I'd stayed. The whole thing was made worse by two idiots who would consistently stick around even though the odds were overwhelmingly against them, then river something to take down a big pot. Every single time.

I started getting rather pissed about the whole thing and probably tilted a bit toward the end. My last hand I had AQs. It limps to me on the button. I make it $0.08. I know this will only chase one or two of the limpers out, but I figure I've probably got the best hand and might as well start building the pot. The flop brings A95. Cutoff bets, I raise, it folds back to the cutoff who calls. Turn is a J. Cutoff bets. I've only got a bit more than the size of the pot left in my stack so I push it all in. He calls and turns over A9. I probably should have played it less aggressively with just TP, but I couldn't help but be impressed with the stellar play of calling a 4BB pre-flop raise with A9o. That was exactly the kind of thing I'd been seeing all night. Actually, that was one of the less idiotic pre-flop moves. Nights like this make me wish Badugi was more popular.

The bankroll is now $4.30 lighter than it was at the start of the day.