I’ve seen a frightening trend lately. I’ve lost to four of a kind…3 out of the last 4 sessions. Two of those weren’t so bad since I didn’t have awesome hands and I was up against small stacks. Last night was the most egregious of them though, since I lost with a full house and of course was all-in. This trend can’t continue…right?
Image by darkpatator
This is Abby, our three legged cat. Her eyes really shine when the sun is on her, so I thought why not make them stand out even more with a little color isolation. This one is currently my desktop at home.
What kind of action do you think you’d get from this flop with no pre-flop raises? Q
2
7. Obviously everyones hole cards matter, but here is the action before we get that far:
SB bets $0.02, Hero raises to $0.08, CO folds, SB raises to $0.14, Hero raises to $0.50, SB raises to $0.86, Hero raises to $2.98 and is All-In, SB calls $2.12.
Now I had 7
7
in the hole giving me three 7’s, so I was more then happy to get all-in at this point. The only hand that has me beat is pocket Q’s, but with no pre-flop raising I wasn’t worried about that. I figured I was up against a heart flush draw. Come to find out, I was up against top pair, no kicker- Q3. The turn was a 5 and the river was a 3. I shouldn’t question bad play when I benefit from it, but this one really left me scratching my head?
Current Bankroll: $67.06 Previous: $63.18 Started with: $2.00
I played poker online at Pokerstars for the first time in a week last night. My game didn’t seem to suffer, I actually played well and even handled a couple of big losses quite well. I lost to 4 jacks when I was holding a full house, the second time I’ve lost to 4 of a kind in the last two sessions, a trend I hope doesn’t continue. I also joined a table at one point that some of the previous players started chatting about a bot being at the table. The player they said was a bot never responded and very shortly after left the table. Hmm…I saw the supposed bot win a big hand just before it exited too. I hear about poker bots, I just figure a huge site like Pokerstars would have the means to eliminate them? God knows they have the money to spend on eradicating bots. Anyway, back to talking about poker…
I sometimes wonder, should I quit while I’m ahead (up a decent chunk of money that is)? I mean it never seems to fail, as cyclic as poker is, that after an upswing you can expect a downswing soon. That happened to me last night. After about 20 minutes of play I started getting some cards, 30 minutes in I’ve now won a few big pots and all of my tables are up a good chunk of money. Next thing you know, my full houses are losing to 4 of a kind, my two pairs are losing to 3 of a kind. As if everyone could see the downswing happening, donking into me seemed to be a favorite past time all of a sudden. I hung around just long enough to feel myself approaching tilt mode, which I have been doing so well avoiding for a long time. This is when I knew I should exit, before my emotions started dictating play. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), I exited at basically the exact time I had lost all the money I had won in the first 30 minutes. So I wonder, after being up maybe a couple buy-ins in about 30 minutes, should I have quit while I was ahead? In the past I usually would, I’m happy to get some time in at the tables and then go be a productive member of society again. So maybe my game did suffer? After not playing for a week, I wanted to play for a while!
Current Bankroll: $63.18 Started with: $2.00
I didn’t see it with my naked eye, so I was a bit surprised when I opened it on my computer to find a little orange bug hanging out in the photo. I took a series of macro shots of various Tulip leaves with water droplets on them, and some of the other photos have the same kind of bugs. I wish I saw them at the time, I would have tried to get a macro shot of them.
Poker has been put on the back burner for now. I played last weekend and did well, but haven’t had the time or desire to play since. Lately I’ve really been into photography though. Its been fun learning how to use more features of my camera, a Canon PowerShot A720 IS. In this case I tested out the Aquarium setting, which is just a turn of the dial to SCN (Scene) and then select “Aquarium”. I was surprised how well it worked, especially considering it was dark and it didn’t use flash.
I’ve just recently started trying to do some color isolation with photos. At first I was using Photoshop 6.0, obviously a very old version. I’m really loving the online photo editor Picnik though, and that’s what I used for this photo. I’ll never say Picnik compares at all to Photoshop, but I find myself getting more of the simple things done much easier with Picnik, plus I barely know how to use Photoshop. You can see the original below.
Here is the original:
Took this in very low light to get the fully dilated pupil of Charlie’s eye. Cat’s eyes are usually so vibrant, seeing it all black gives it that creepy or evil feel you get in horror movies.
I had someone join one of my tables last night on Pokerstars and declare himself a donkey, and then ask “who wants all of my money?”. I made a mental note, kept an eye on his play. True to his word, he was a donkey, raising pre-flop almost every hand. He’d win a hand from time to time, to stay afloat just long enough for me to get dealt AK in the small blind- the donkey was the button. Here is the pre-flop play by play: UTG calls $0.02, 2 folds, BTN raises to $0.12, Hero raises to $0.32, BB folds, UTG raises to $2.09 and is All-In, BTN calls $1.10 and is All-In, Hero calls $1.77. I expected to get an all-in against the self-proclaimed donkey, at some point anyway, but now I’m against two all-ins, I had them both covered. The flop comes QK8, turn is the A and the river is the K giving me a full house (Kings full of Aces) for the win. The donkey had A9, not a hand I’d ever consider worth my whole stack pre-flop, especially after a re-raise and an all-in, but he did say he was a donkey. UTG had pocket 9’s, who first just called the $0.02 then went all-in after the raise and my re-raise? A semi-bluff maybe, I don’t know, seems like a strange play to me. I used to think donkeys didn’t know they were donkeys, but now I have new studies that prove otherwise.
Current Bankroll: $61.99 Previous: $49.37 Started with: $2.00
The Pistons routed the Sixers 100-77, to win their series 4-2 and move on to play the Orlando Magic. This game was never close. The Red Wings continued the routing by beating the Colorado Avalanche 8-2 and sweeping the series. This doesn’t appear to be the rivalry it once was, probably because of the lack of competition. The Tigers may not have routed the Yankees, only winning 8-4, but they did sweep the series in New York for the first time since 1966. The Tigers are starting to look like the team they were built to be.
