The End of An Era

Suddenly, but not entirely unexpectedly, the Commissioner and Treasurer of my A League have resigned. The A League has fallen on hard times lately: not enough games, not enough enthusiasm amongst the participants, and a shortage of folks willing to host. The steam has gone out of the enterprise, and internecine squabbles and personality conflicts have also taken their toll. I will, however, always be grateful to the A League for giving me a venue to learn how to play tournament poker for actual cash stakes, and I'll miss the routine of playing in a well-organized group. I am also confident that the friendships I've made amongst these players will endure.

In other breaking news, my B League hosted a small impromptu tourney last night and I won it. Not a whole lotta cabbage, but welcome nonetheless. I attribute it to the knitting I brought with me.

Finally, an important note: Blogger is discontinuing support for FTP publishing, which is what I use to host my blog on my server. As of May 1, all of us FTP users have to either migrate to Blogger/Google's servers or switch blogging software. Since I have no desire to have all of my writing at the mercy of Goo-we're-only-a-little-evil-gle, I will be migrating to a WordPress blog. This will cause disruptions. The painstakingly crafted design will probably evaporate. The RSS feed may change names. My archives may disappear, although I am working hard to avoid that.

If you want to keep following this blog, I recommend that you make sure your bookmark for my site is the canonical URL:

http://raiseorfold.cardgrrl.com

The next version, however (temporarily I hope) lame, will appear at that address.

Thanks so much for following along with me!

The Secret to Poker Success

Last night, in a moment of insomniac whimsy, I signed up for a $30 Deepstack NLHE tourney on Pokerstars. More than eight hours later, I won the damn thing, beating 114 other players.

Well, actually, we chopped it heads up, but I was the official winner.

So, winning the tourney 'n' all was nice, especially since it's the only winning of any sort I've done in quite some time, but the real joy was discovering how to mitigate the debilitating boredom and frustration of playing poker online.

It's simple: KNIT.

Knitting is soothing, meditative, calming. It has a de-stressing effect. It keeps the part of your monkey brain that would be cooking up REAL distraction pre-occupied with relatively simple and easily set-aside pastimes, so that when you're ready to turn your full attention to the game, you're not worried about what's going on, well, over there somewhere.

And the bonus: you generally get a knitted item to enjoy when you're done. "Free blankets for everyone! Yeah, that's the ticket!"

And yes, I do believe I may be the slightest bit punchy from lack of sleep? Whyever do you ask?

BBT: Count Me In

I'm not playing a whole lot of poker these days, but I can't resist the lure of a cheap seat to the WSOP. Look for me at the Mookie and perhaps Poker From the Rail. Read all about it here.

I Wanna Play!

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on WBCOOP to play.

Registration code: 095798

All the cool kids are doing it, so I want to too! Besides, with my new relaxed attitude my results are bound to be better, right?

What A Rush

I've been playing much less frequently, and generally enjoying it more. Despite starting with a below-average stack, I managed to claw my way to fourth in the A League's end-of-quarter tournament. I hadn't played a lot of games during the season, so the fourth place freeroll finish gave a nice little boost to my ROI.

I joined another tournament series based in Arlington, mostly made up of folks I originally met playing pub poker (and some B Leaguers). I was really pleased with the way I played this game, and had I won my coin toss I would have been well-positioned to make some noise in the tournament. It was a rebuy, which isn't my favorite format. Other games are not rebuys and should suit me even better. I cheerfully recouped my investment in the tournament by playing in the cash game that broke out alongside.

I made returns to both the Capitol Hill and Crime Scene games, where I have achieved modest profits. All in all, 2010 results in live play have been satisfactory, and I've been having fun with it ~ which is the name of the game for me now.

Online, the massacre of horribleness continued. For my own amusement, and to prove that it's not all in my head, I've been taking screenshots of the insanely bad beats I've been dealt. Originally I planned to post them to the Book of Bad Beats, but I don't have the heart for it. It's too depressing. Maybe one day I'll do a massive dump (and I use the word advisedly) of all of them.

But then the heavens opened and angels sang and Full Tilt delivered its latest Spawn of Satan: Rush Poker. Rush Poker is multi-tabling without the multi (although if you're an insatiable action junkie you can indeed multi-table rush tables… cowabunga!). Here's everything you need to know about Rush Poker:

• You see around 300 hands an hour.
• You can play all of your hands in position if you want to.
• Your HUD software may not be as useful, but if you play long enough you will start to recognize some of your opponents in the pool.

Long story short, I was truly down to my last $5 on Full Tilt when I started to play .05/.10 Rush Poker. In two sessions of about an hour and a half each, I have built up to about $60. SIXTY DOLLARS playing 10NL. It took me a little while to make the strategic adjustments needed, but I gotta say, for a quick, ADD-addled hit of profitable playing, Rush Poker is the 'nads. (Well, until the doomswitch kicks in, anyway.)

There are a couple of annoyances in the software, chief among them being that even if you select the "check/fold" or "fold to any bet" options in the big blind, you don't get whisked automatically to a new table unless you click the "Quick Fold" button too. That's just dumb, since the big blind is a timewaster in this game. I also worry that Rush Poker will cause the bad players to go broke quicker, give up, and never come back. I can only hope that Full Tilt has done some studies that show people are more likely to reload in this format than in others.

Looking ahead, I expect to make a trip to AC in February and I'm heading to Las Vegas again toward the end of March. The Vegas trip should be a Trifecta of Fun: PAO Meet-Up, AVP Meet-Up, and precious time with the Grump.

And finally, we're hearing that Charlestown WV will be opening their poker room in July (or thereabouts). That's just a couple of easy highway hours away, much less grueling than the trip to AC and definitely doable as a day trip. Sweet!

The Joy of Poker

Those of you following along on my tweets already know the outcome of my trip last weekend to Atlantic City: a big steaming pile of break-even.

And you know what? That's just fine with me.

I had a little mini-revelation on this outing. Despite my decision to let go of the pro-poker dream, I was still playing as if my livelihood depended on it. Now, generally, one might think was a good thing. Discipline, etc. And that's undoubtedly true.

But playing professionally is also notoriously a grind. It's especially a grind when things have not been going one's way for a protracted period of time: the bad results are depressing, and bad results often lead to bad play, which leads to more bad results. It's the most vicious of vicious cycles.

My first day was a downer. Lose lose lose lose. Bleah. No fun. Lots of folding, discipline aplenty, then one dubious decision and buh-bye stack. At day's end, I vowed to myself that I would play my A game in the Circuit tournament. My one and only goal was regret-free poker.

And I did. I played for six hours without making a single error. I watched glumly as the correct folds I made would have turned into table-stacking monsters, but I made the right choices. I was colossally card-dead most of the time, and was presented with very few viable stealing opportunities. More than six hours in, I still had a starting stack, and it was shove-or-fold time. I won a few blinds and antes. I folded KJo to a raise and re-raise in front of me and missed the flopped boat (d'oh!). I finally shoved with pocket 8s and lost to AK behind me.

I was now $700 in the hole for the trip. But I was feeling pretty good about the way I'd played in the tournament, and I wasn't especially tired. I decided that, since I was unlikely to be back in AC in the near future, I might as well mix it up in the cash games again and this time try to actually enjoy it. I took $1000 to the table and promised myself that I was going to play well and have fun: no scared money here, no ubernitiness. I brought out my cheerful, social persona. I was going to have a good time no matter how the cards fell.

And I did, oh yes I did.

My hand selection criterion became: will I have fun playing this hand (in this position, for these stakes, against these players)? My folding, calling, betting, or raising criterion: which action will be most fun?

And because I consider winning money more fun than losing, this didn't change my gameplay a great deal. What it did change was my attitude.

I proceeded to play for six more hours, during which time I completely recouped my loss and made a few bucks to boot. I began to remember why I got hooked on poker in the first place. I rediscovered my inner recreational player.

So that's me, now: I'm a recreational player, and that's okay. In fact, I like it! A great psychological weight has been lifted. My little hobby more than pays for itself, plus I get free hotel rooms and food too. And I now have license to play JUST FOR THE SHEER FUN OF IT. Wheeeeee!

A Whole Lotta Nuthin Going On 'Round Here

I played in a tournament and a cash game last night. In the tournament, I lasted for more than 3.5 hours and didn't win a single pot. Not one. My three best starting hands were JJ, KQo, and A6o. I never had suited connectors or any other pocket pairs. I am quite sure that I've never before busted out of a tournament before without winning at least one hand somewhere along the way.

Below is a summary of the 100 starting hands I recorded in the cash game. The fact that it turns out to be an even hundred surprised me, I started keeping track about half an hour into my session, and had played no hands voluntarily to that point. The more than four-hour stretch (in two venues) prior during which I had essentially nothing playable was what prompted me to start taking notes.

2 Premium hands:
   AK
   JJ
I won with Big Slick and lost with the Jacks.

4 Non-Premium Pocket Pairs:
   99
   88
   77
   44
I played all these hands and won with the 99. No sets.

3 Medium Aces:
   AJx2
   AT
I played both AJ hands in position and won once.

2 Suited connectors:
   98
   87
I played both of these hands and won with the 98.

14 Weak Aces:
   A9x2
   A8
   A6x2
   A5
   A4
   A3x3
   A2x4
I played 5 of these hands, suited and in position, and won with A9 and A2.

5 Two-Broadway:
   KQx2
   QT
   JTx2
I played KQ twice in position and won once.

70 Junk:
   K9 K7 K6x3 K5 K4 K3K2x2
   Q9x2 Q7x2 Q6x2 Q3x3 Q2
   J9x2 J8 J7x2 J6x4 J5 J4x2 J3
   T9 T7 T6x4 T5x3 T2x3
   98 96 95x2 94 93x3 92 86 84 83
   76 75 74 73x2 72x2
   63x2
   54
   43 42x2
I played 5 of these hands either out of the blinds or on the button, and won with K3s, Q6s, K7s and J9s.

We were eight-handed for about an hour, and fluctuated between seven and six the rest of the time. Over the course of 3 hours or so, I voluntarily played approximately 20% of my hands. Of the hands I played, I won just over half. Unfortunately, the pots I lost were bigger than the ones I won. The biggest pot I lost was with the pocket 7s; I'm quite sure I was ahead on the flop, but the board got ugly and my opponent persuaded me he had chased and made a straight on the river. I folded to a bet that would have put me all-in to call. (Had I not lost that pot, I would have made a modest profit in the game.)

For me, the impression of the evening was of having very little to work with, and winning very little with the few strong hands I did have. If I hadn't played any of the weak suited Aces, the suited connectors, or the junk hands, the outcome would have been virtually identical. I made two good calls when my opponents were trying to buy pots, and I semi-bluffed successfully once and bluffed outright once for a win. I guesstimate I was moved off a better (but not made) hand a couple of times myself.

Overall, it was far more frustrating than interesting; I had few difficult decisions to make, and rarely any occasion to do anything flarey myself that would put another player to the test.

Finally

Believe me, I know a two-table $10 SNG is nothing to crow about. Really, I know this, I do. But if you had any idea how bad I've been running online, you'd appreciate that this constituted a major victory for me.

Is there any possibility that the doomswitch has been turned off?

Nah.

Precipitous Drop in Hell's Ambient Temperature

Or maybe it's just variance. Whatevs.

I made a small tweak in my 1/2 cash game. Just a little one. And the results have been startling. Instead of winning small and losing big, I'm losing small and winning big. Two substantial gains in two sessions. I know, I know, not a statistically meaningful sample.

Perhaps it's all coincidence. Dunno.

But I'm going to keep up this new approach for awhile and see how it goes.

In the meantime, I'm mightily looking forward to the 2K Guarantee at Harrah's 1pm Megastack Tournament tomorrow. One-fitty gets you 20K in starting chips, a sweet slow structure, and half-hour levels. A bunch of AVPers are playing; y'all come too!

Not Looking Good

Lots 'o' losing. Other than two small tourney wins (actually, chops one win and one chop), lots 'n' lots o' losing. I am the loserator. Loserific. La Loserella.

And tonight, in a fit of pique, the display on my iPhone went belly up. It had been doing the same thing as the previous model (turning on dimly occasionally). Then, it just gave up altogether. So a trip to the Apple Store is in order tomorrow, first thing. Hopefully the replacement will be as swift as the last time. Not impressed by the product quality control, however, I must say. (My first iPhone was such a joy, built like a tank and totally reliable. This latest model, not so much.)

Tonight, after the endless losing, I actually had a profitable cash session. Half of it was due to two hands: making a straight flush when the other guy had the same straight; and flopping top set of Jacks when the other guy had pocket Queens. The second half of the profit came from not getting brutalized, for once, and not making any dopey errors.

I have one week left. There's gonna have to be a massive amount of winning between now and next Friday if I plan to show a profit for this trip. I'm hoping Labor Day weekend vacationers will play lots of poker worse than I do.

[Update: iPhone seems to have debricked itself after getting charged up a bit. Will wait 'til I get home to look into fixes.]

Backlog

My goodness, you go for nearly a week without posting and then, when you finally do sit down to write something, you're completely paralyzed by how much catching up you have to do!

I've been feeling too stingy and stubborn to pay for the internet connection at Harrah's. So rather than sum up every day like a sensible human being, I kept putting it off, and now I'm sitting in the (arctic) food court at the Venetian, trying to make up for lost time.

First there were nearly 200 emails to read.
Then, almost 500 RSS feeds.
Plus the photos I had to get off my camera, on to my computer, and then file and edit.

Blog post? Oh please. If I had anything interesting to say when I first sat down, it's long since evaporated. So I'll give you the very quick, rough rundown instead. (The good news is that starting tomorrow I'll be AT the Venetian for four days, which should make it much more convenient for me to stay current.)

I had a lovely birthday in Las Vegas, which included a winning session of 2/5 at the V and a delicious dinner with Rakewell at Tao Bistro. I had a fun and modestly profitable venture at the 4/8 HORSE game on Wednesday night. I took an absolute bath at the 2/5 game at the Wynn (not because the competition was especially tough, but because I was on the losing end of a couple of monster pots... it happens). On Friday, I squeaked out a small win at the MGM's 2/5. Contrary to all the reports of extreme softness I had been receiving, my table was 3/4ths rocky regulars and pros. There was one classic Crasian, and a few obvious touristy young men who quickly dumped their money to the table and were replaced by others. Alas, I wasn't able to skim off much of that bounty.

Saturday, I played in Harrah's 1pm Megastack tournament. We only had 14 runners, which made for a smallish prize pool, which only paid 2. The structure is excellent, and my only complaint about the way the room runs the game is that they don't have a dedicated clock for it. Three other scheduled tournaments overlapped with mine, which probably diluted both the entrant numbers and the staff attention. If you find yourself looking for a nice, slow tournament with lots of play for the money (despite a steep juice), please check this game out. It's not currently getting big fields, and I would hate for Harrah's to give up on it for lack for participation. I will certainly play it again before I leave Vegas.

The tournament went just over 8 hours. We agreed to pay 4th place his money back, and for 3rd to get double his money, which further attenuated the prize. It ended with faithful reader Tarpie and me going heads-up! After a short tussle, I was fortunate enough to win. I was delighted to share in the glory with a familiar face. Well played, my friend.

I think this evening I'll head over to Caesars to see if they have a 2/5 game going. It's been nice to have a slow, quiet start to my day ~ and I'm definitely convinced now that that I don't want to go so long without breaking out the computer for some quality internet time. Promise I'll be more frequent going forward!

I know I said no more bad beat stories...

But this is the way I've been running in big tournaments online lately.

A Good Day Online

I came in 11th in a 1500 person MTT on Full Tilt. And then I won a smallish MTT O8 Hi/Lo game. Neither of these accomplishments ranks as a major achievement, but it does make me realize that I have been leaving something important out of my ponderings: namely, the possibility of earning some of my keep online.

Playing online is not my favorite thing. I wouldn't want to do it all the time. But I have been having steadily increasing amounts of success in MTTs, and cashing at a pretty good pace lately. I've also been doing surprisingly well playing ~ of all things ~ small stakes LHE. There's every reason to believe that a certain amount of online play could contribute to my baseline income in a decent way.

This puts some interesting ideas in my head. I may actually be able to have my cake and eat it too.

Almost

I can't even remember why I decided to play a $4 LIMIT donkament starting at 9 at night. Especially one with 896 entrants. Seriously, this was just a demented choice from start to finish.

But I got past 893 of my opponents, despite making a couple of REALLY boneheaded plays. (Everyone else was just that much worse, which is saying something!) To be fair, I definitely had my luckbox moments too.

It's been a while since I had a strong finish in a big online MTT. So this feels kinda nice. Thanks to all the kind folks who railed me for hours. (You people are nuts.)

Must. Play. Poker.

Despite having arrived home at an unseemly hour of the morning, and then getting only about five hours of low-quality mid-day sleep, I found myself impelled to play in my A League's first tournament of the new quarter.

I was fortunate enough to win the game. We all know you can't win a tournament without getting lucky a couple of times; I was helped along on this occasion by my first ever straight flush with the group. But I have to say that playing poker in Las Vegas for a solid month also contributed to my success. I was making accurate reads and timely moves that now come to me much more naturally and fluidly than ever before.

Practice definitely matters. Having seen a wide variety of situations and having encountered a broad spectrum of styles makes a difference.

Something important has changed as a result of my time in Las Vegas: I can no longer be intimidated. After the variety of winning and losing experiences I've had, no one at the table and nothing anyone does can terrorize me. I will think through my options carefully, I will evaluate a broad spectrum of factors. But the choice I make will not be influenced by fear.

You can't scare me anymore, folks. Give it up. I am officially unafraid.

Triple The Disappointment

I hate writing bust-out post-mortems.

Long story short: I made one mistake early, calling off my first 3000 chips with top pair. I thought my opponent was bluffing, when in fact he had gone runner runner for a backdoor flush. I misread him completely. My bad.

I traded in for my remaining 6000 chips. My table was tough; the only donkey (other than me) busted out in Level 2, and after that it was just high-quality poker all around.

And for the next five hours I did my best, to no good result. I was mostly card-dead. When I had anything even vaguely resembling a hand, there was inevitably already a raise out in front in me or a re-raise behind. (My table had exactly ONE unraised pot ~ except for blind v. blind hands ~ in the nearly 6 hours I played.) I couldn't hit a flop. I had nothing to play back with when the button made a stab at the blinds. My best hand was pocket JJ, and even then, there was an A on the flop, and I had to essentially turn my hand into a bluff to win the pot.

I got shorter and shorter. I never could get a spot to make a move.

Finally, I found 99 in the big blind. This was my second biggest hand of the day. There was a mid-position 2.5BB raise (the table norm), and two callers behind. This was a no-brainer shove for me. The initial raiser came over the top all-in. The others folded. I tabled my hand, and the other guy showed AA. Buh-bye.

I didn't take any bad beats, but I also think I only made one truly wrong decision. I just couldn't get anything going. When I tried to make a move, I got massively re-raised. When I caught a little bit of a hand, I couldn't do much of anything with it. I was either outplayed or outclassed (or both). In either case: no traction.

By the time I busted out, I was deeply frustrated.

My only consolation was watching Jerrod Ankenman, who won Event #42 (Mixed Hold'em), get felted at my table holding QQ ~ having gone all in on a baby flop ~ and losing to AA. Sound familiar? Apparently I'm not the only person to stack off with a simple overpair of Queens.

And that's it for my scheduled WSOP events: one mini-cash for 4 attempts.

I have three days left in Vegas. I plan to play cash at the Rio again tomorrow. It is POSSIBLE that I'll decide to play in one Main Event satellite in the evening. I suppose if I were to win a Main Event seat I would be very, very tempted to stay and play. (Gotta follow the story arc to its conclusion, right?)

Otherwise, it's home again for me, where the grim work of review and assessment will begin in earnest.

I, Degenerate

Well, it had to happen eventually. I suppose.

After playing in a galloping-blinds turbo HORSE tournament at Green Valley and faring poorly, I naturally decided the sensible thing to do was to go to Harrah's and play the 4/8 HORSE cash game.

Of course. What else?

Never mind that Vegas's HORSE lovers converge on this modest stakes game. Never mind that they all know each other's styles backwards and forwards. Never mind that I was epically failing to heed the number one adage of table selection: PLAY WITH PEOPLE WHO YOU HAVE REASON TO BELIEVE ARE LESS SKILLFUL THAN YOU ARE.

Me, I consider losing at such a game as the price of a higher poker education. (Yeah, that's the ticket. Also, it's fun.)

Long story short, I commenced playing with this bunch at about 11pm, and finally bailed out at about 8:30 am this morning. Total profit for 9.5 hours of play: ONE DOLLAR.

But you know what? I count that as a win, and a pretty huge win, at that.

I battled back from a $240 deficit, and I did it after the table had become significantly short-handed. We played much of the night five-handed or less. That I managed to break even against this competition, playing games that are not my main strength... well, let's just say I'm entirely satisfied with the results.

Of course, getting some sleep and having anything left over for tomorrow ~ well, that's a whole 'nother question. Pulling an all-nighter was not part of the game plan. I have the discipline of a wet noodle. But I am a wet noodle who continues to learn how to be a better poker-player.

The Long Haul

Playing lots of tournaments is, it turns out, completely exhausting. Sunday I basically shut down at about 9pm in the evening and had to come home and just veg for many hours.

I decided not to play the Razz tournament today. It was too expensive an entry fee for a game I'm just not that good at. (I played in the Grand NLHE tourney at the Nugget instead and made it until about 10 o'clock at night.) I've decided to save up my pennies and enter Event #52, the Triple Chance No Limit Hold'em Tournament.

There are couple of reasons for this. One is that it offers a truly meaningful 9,000 in chips to go along with the one-hour blind levels. That's potentially an AWFUL LOT of play.

Another is the novelty of the structure, where you can start with as little as 3,000 and then effectively "rebuy" 3,000 at a time twice more until the end of the third level. At the end of the third level you automatically get the rest of your chips if you haven't deployed them already. There are some interesting strategic possibilities. It's the first time that this structure has been offered at the WSOP, so it'll be new to everyone.

Finally, the more expensive buy-in and the Sunday start will probably curtail the number of entries.

All told, this seems like a good combination of features for me. It'll likely be my last hurrah at the WSOP this year.

I Made A Rookie Mistake

We had just made the money. My head was flooded with happy-making endorphins.

I looked down at QQ in the cut-off; it was the first premium hand I'd seen in the nearly two hours we'd been playing day 2. "Don't go broke with this hand," I told myself, "it's only a pair of queens."

The action folded around to me and I made a standard raise. The button re-raised me, almost tripling my bet. He and I had approximately equal stacks.

With that re-raise, I gave him the following range: AA, KK, QQ (not likely for obvious reasons), JJ, possibly 10 10, and AK. Or air, as an aggressive button move to counter a cut-off steal, although I would assign that possibility a relatively low likelihood.

Should I raise or call? I thought I'd take a flop, and if it came with an A or a K, I could get away from my QQ easily. Of course, by doing so, I pretty much defined my own hand range to my opponent.

I called. (Probably a mistake: if I had re-raised and then he had come over the top, I would have had a very clear idea where I was.)

The flop came 9 8 2. I checked, intending to check-raise.

He bet out. I raised, making it 20K to go.

He moved all in. (This same player, a couple of hands earlier, had claimed to have laid down JJ to an all-in bet, saying that he wasn't prepared to play for his whole stack with a hand that weak.)

I was behind to AA, KK, and a set of 99s or 88s. I had about 40K left. If I folded, I would suddenly have barely half the average stack. Over half my stack was already in the pot.

I was high on having cashed. This is a leak in my game that I have previously identified: success goes to my head and I make poor, rash decisions. Had I breathed and contemplated for another 45 seconds, I think I could have found the fold, which was clearly the right thing to do. How could I not be behind here, way behind? I was, mostly likely, drawing to two outs.

I called anyway. If you were to ask me why, I really couldn't say, other than there was a ton of money in the pot, my brain was clouded with pleasure, and I was indulging in crazy wishful thinking (a hero call snaps off an elaborate bluff, or he's got JJ).

Of course he turned over KK, and I didn't catch a miracle Q.

It was a very bad decision. Really bad. Donkalicious. An utter embarrassment. Certainly not worthy of an aspiring professional.

I am very annoyed with myself. I could have made the right choice and played on with a smaller, but still potentially effective stack. I could have gone deeper. I could have given myself a chance to come back. I COULD AND SHOULD HAVE FOLDED. I am, in fact, mortified that I made such an amateur error.

Paradoxically, however, I am also actually grateful to have busted out of a big tournament through my own bad play. I have been so beaten up lately by bad luck, that it was somehow refreshing to be able to take full responsibility for this failure. Granted, it sucks to have QQ run into KK the very first hand after the money, but hey ~ these things happen. Ultimately, though, I made my own misfortune this time, and I am entirely willing to take responsibility for it.

I am not soul-crushed by it, as I would have been if I'd gone out on some kind of horrible bad beat. This is an expensive lesson, but I do believe that I can learn from it and that the sting of it will make the lesson stick so that I become a better player.

I cashed (albeit for the minimum) in a World Series of Poker event. That's a personal milestone, and I'm proud of it despite my disappointment. It's one small but meaningful step on the road to greater success.

I'm not done yet.

WSOP Event #36 Day 2 Preview

Can anyone explain to me why YouTube choices the most unflattering keyframe possible, rather than ~ say ~ the obvious choices of the starting or ending frames of the video? Annoying!