Mornings with "ze Germans"

I'm starting to see how people can try and play more than one game at the same time. When you're not in a hand, things can get boring. I know that I should be watching how people bet, but since this is only for play money anyway it's not like I can expect everyone to take the game seriously. For example, there's this player who came in with the minimum 1k chips and immediately went all-in pre-flop... and other people called him! And what kills me is that he eventually won the pot, and tripled-up.

Playing "right" is also killing me, but as many folks say, it's better to play right than to play stupid. I folded J-x, only to see two more of them come up on the board and I could have throttled myself. But according to this website once you get below J-10 suited, your odds of winning the pot are less than 15% and those aren't good odds at all.

Dealer: Game #11196654068: Tr1shaLynn wins pot (310) with a straight, Deuce to Six

In my pocket was 4-6o, and the flop gave me the 3 and the 5. Two outs meant that I had a 22% chance of catching the straight on either the turn or the river (I think; someone check my math, please?). I realize now that I probably could have bet more when the river gave me the deuce I needed. Any more than the $50, though, might have scared them off and there were two of them in there so that I think that was okay.

Dealer: Game #11196852527: Tr1shaLynn wins pot (290) with three of a kind, Jacks

I did much better reeling the guy in with my Jack in the pocket, catching the third Jack on the turn. I was the aggressor, starting off with a bet of $30, which he called, and then raising it to $50, which he also called.

Summary: During current Hold'em session you were dealt 40 hands and saw flop:
- 4 out of 7 times while in big blind (57%)
- 4 out of 7 times while in small blind (57%) [I choose to auto-post blinds so I don't hold people up and also so that I can see more cards.]
- 4 out of 26 times in other positions (15%)
- a total of 12 out of 40 (30%)
Pots won at showdown - 2 of 6 (33%)
Pots won without showdown - 0

Other than the fact that I play tight and I haven't gotten to a point to where I can say I'm a fantastic online player, I have no idea exactly how to interpret these stats. I remember enough about math to say that I can't compare the 30% that I see a flop is approximate to the 33% of the times that I won because there are several times when I was first to act and I'd check all the way to the river and then fold when someone raised. I can say that I can at least get an hour's entertainment out of an initial buy-in, and that bodes well for me when I go to Las Vegas for my 30th birthday part in September.

I guess I'm just going to have to be content with that for now.

Taking more stabs at poker

Wil Wheaton wrote once that when he's really "on" as a performer, he can't remember what really happened because he's so invested in the energy and it whooshes by like a blur. A bad evening (or what he perceives as bad because I personally think that his "Spongebobvegaspants" story is one of triumph rather than defeat) gets seared into his memory and then later regurgitated in his blog.

My brain is obviously wired differently from Wil's because I mostly remember the best hand I had in the recent cash game I was in. Doc was dealing to the VIPs and other staff members of the local area convention that I volunteer for. My buy-in had been generously donated to me, and I somehow managed to grow my stack to a decent size. Then came the hand that unseated trip sevens as my favorite winning hand of all time.

I can't remember if I'd been dealt Q-Jo or Q-Ko. What I do remember is the flop, coming up with the rest of what I needed for an unsuited straight, Ace-high. In my well-hidden excitement, I didn't think that perhaps Dash had also hit a straight or any other kind of hand that would have beaten my straight when he laid his first $5 chip down. I slow-played the hell out of that hand, raising by only $5 increments each time he opened the betting. There's no way in hell, I thought, that you can have anything that will beat my straight. It's destined for me to win this hand. But I'll keep letting you think I don't have anything.

I don't remember what the turn and the river were. I probably should have been more cautious, but nothing paired on the board and he kept laying those $5 chips down, and I kept raising him by that much. I fell in love with the flop, something that I know can be dangerous. Finally it comes time for us to show our hands and yes, I had his two pair (Aces and something) beat. As I raked the chips closer to me, I even needled him a little bit, saying, "How could you not think that I had the straight from the way I was betting?" (Even now, I think I probably shouldn't have gloated or tried to put him on tilt. It was supposed to be a friendly game after all.)

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Best hand of this morning:

Dealer: Game #11178369659: Tr1shaLynn wins pot (575) with a full house, Aces full of Tens
schmechschdp: n1
sdscards: #@*@@#*
Tr1shaLynn: thx

I slow-played him, and had the Ace in my pocket. All the while, I'm telling myself that I really shouldn't be in this hand, but we were three-handed at the time and every time I went to fold, the game kept telling me that checking was free. Who can resist free checking? Once I saw that I made my house, I reeled him in by doubling his raise on the river.

And then I ended up giving a lot of it to another player who got a different full house later on.

Bad beat number two came when I thought I could bluff someone out of a pot by making them think I had a straight. I keep forgetting that you can't project confidence online if you're not chatting/talking to someone and his two pair held up. After that, I went all-in and busted out.

Damn full houses. You're too damn shiny.