roller coaster

Of poker, of time management, of exercise, of weight, all that shit...

Weekly (almost) home game on Friday night - up, down, around, tilty, untilty, rocking, rolling, and ridiculousness. Got cruising early when I rivered the nuts on Brian to stack him early, then bled it all away chasing bullshit. Got back to a big stack late when I stacked Nate for a $170 pot with trips, King kicker, then bled it away again missing legitimate draws that time.

The game was odd this week, several of our regulars were out, replaced with folks that don't play that often, and the dynamic was a little different. Add to that the fact that it was 100+ degrees outside in the afternoon and it took my poor window unit air conditioner quite a while to catch up, throw in a pinch of Johnny getting money in good on the flop to get sucked out on the turn several times, toss in a dash of sticking myself in the seat with no air circulating, and you get a tilty Falstaff. I spent about an hour on sweaty card dead tilt (which is more uncomfortable than normal CDT by the virtue of the fact that I was sweaty), and then sucked it up, threw a little of my concern for poker to the winds, and had fun with my friends. I finished the night up $15 overall, after we all cashed out and realized that I'd never bothered to collect the initial buyins from two players, leaving us $90 short when we first started the cashout process!

I was indeed captain of my high school math team, but the fact that it was in South Carolina should lower your expectations of my mathematical prowess to a level that would allow me to do stupid shit like that. I think I'm gonna need a banker for my home game!

We did make a change to the rolling jackpot, that both cards in your hand must play in order to win the rolling jackpot. That should let it build to a nice little sum, and get some tightboxes to loosen up their starting hand requirements.

Like that's a problem in this game. Really, anytime you can get over $800 on the table in a $.25/.50 home game with 9 people, it's a loose enough game. I think only 4 people around the table Friday night didn't rebuy at some point, so there was plenty of loose juiciness going around. We also debuted the new pieces of my cash game chip set, a rack of Crystal Park casino $5 chips I got off a guy from Chiptalk.net.

If you're interested in poker chips at all, that site's the place to be. There are chip geeks on there that can ID every chip in a stack of ten just looking at the side of the stack. I've gotten some nice chips now, and I'm working on a cash game set of Samurai Palace chips from Holdempokerchips.com, which are some of the nicest chips I've ever seen for the home game market. I'd like to end up with two cash game sets, one of old casino chips like the Crystal Parks, and one of the Samurai Palace chips.

Yesterday I played a little more online, and I was reminded of something that I've known for quite a while - the play at 3/6 an 5/10 online is no better than the play at 1/2 and 2/4, and often worse at 5/10 than at 2/4 or 3/6, since those are levels where people are working thei way up levels and paying attention. I saw some amazing play at 5/10 on FTP yesterday, but had to hit and run in one orbit, because I don't have anywhere near the bankroll online to play that level, so when I picked up a 5BB profit in 3 hands, I bolted. Anybody wanna toss me a grand on FTP and let me take a shot? I'll happily give off 60% of anything I win, but I make no promises to repay, it's a stake, and a gamble.

I don't expect anyone to go there. I wouldn't. But if you're feeling like a whole pile of gamboool, I'm up for it if you are.

Down to 233 today, making a total of 32 pounds down. Just got back a little while ago from my ride on my new Schwinn (yep, I broke down and bought a real bike), and FUCK, riding on the real road is much harder than riding on the exercise bike. I'm gonna go whimper for a little while now. And eat something, because I think I left a kidney somewhere on that last hill.