The Poker Diaries: It's Time To Pay The Price

Economics being what they are, my playing has gone down to just the home game while a bathroom renovation happens, and so be it; I have daughters, so it's not as if there needs to be extra cash for gambling ventures into my local house of horrors, especially when it's not NFL season and I can't throw some stupid money around on prop bets. So Friday night had 17 players for the tournament, a full table for the post-break cash game, and action until 4am. In other words, a pretty normal night for us.

The tournament went relatively well. I flopped a straight from an unraised big blind, then snap-called the all-in from a short stack with an over pair; helpful. Next came my pocket kings getting cracked against A-J where the turn gave him trip jacks; not so good. Also not good was folding an unraised pot when I misread the chips on the board, which inevitably became a full house after the final three community cards hit my 8-3 off suit right between the eyes. Hard thing to shake off, but I grinded away to come back from that, eventually returning the favor when my A-K had the same guy outkicked, but in the last hand before the final, I tried to buy a pot from a shorter stack who had the nuts, giving away half of my chips in the process. The final table was a bad place to go card-dead, and I went out two from the bubble, but reasonably pleased with my play, especially given how many opportunities I had to go on tilt.

The cash game? Gahhh. Let's just say that Second Best, the worst hand in poker, kept coming to visit, with the results that you can see in the song at the close. It was not all bad luck; there was also my full A Game of suck going on, with bad calls following good folds, rebuying rather than just getting on with my cleaning job, playing with emotion rather than logic, broadcasting tells so badly that it might have seemed like Hollywood work. and not taking the beat with as much grace as I should.

Some days at the table, your play doesn't have that much to do with your take; good play betrayed by bad luck makes the world go around, and bad play rewarded is the happier story. This game, for me at the cash table, was the story you never hear, because it's the least rewarding to the ego, and doesn't set you up with any kind of story for the next game.

I played like ass, and paid the price. So play me out.