Monday, June 23, 2008
Fixing The Holes
Played two more standard $1500 donkaments, without much to report. In each case I busted on a thin call, although it wasn't as though I had a ton of chips - both times it was for around 2700 at 100-200. The first call on the river was thin bad ; the second was probably thin good, at least it was pre flop so I had a shot.
I'm having serious problems with concentration and patience. I've found it difficult to suddenly "switch on" for a key pot and all too often my arm is throwing the chips in before I've really thought about it. There was an interesting thread about table chat on 2+2 recently, a lot of people said you should be paying attention to pick up tells, profile your opponents, manipulate their moods, etc, but then sheets, whose posts I have come to respect a great deal lately, said that it's all just too distracting, and any tells or inducements you get from talk just aren't worth it. I find myself agreeing.
So I jammed the headphones on and tried my best to play one hand at a time and not worry about anything else in the mixed limit/no-limit event yesterday. It helped that I could just rock up in the NL because a) there were no antes and b) there was a limit round every half hour in which I had a decent edge. I peaked at 9K before losing a flip AK < TT and then TT was outflopped by 33 in a key limit pot against the same guy. At least my focus was a lot better in this comp. I might not play any more NL comps, that still leaves PLO8, Stud 8, HORSE and limit Shootout to be winding down with.
The mixed event was funny in that suddenly, out of nowhere, it became a cavalcade of the stars ! In order of bustout we had Devilfish, Dario Minieri, Carlos Mortenson (who I didn't recognise at first as he's lost so much weight), Kenny Tran, Joe Hachem (unbearably smug) and Noah Boaken. Noah was the only one who outlasted me, and certainly played as well as any of the others, albeit Dario and Kenny both got coolered and weren't there very long.
Finally there was one lol donkaments moment. A complete egg sat down next to me and started sucking up to Hachem. "Where have you been Joe, living the high life ?". Hachem just grins. "Well, " says the egg in complete sincerity, "you deserve it".
I'm having serious problems with concentration and patience. I've found it difficult to suddenly "switch on" for a key pot and all too often my arm is throwing the chips in before I've really thought about it. There was an interesting thread about table chat on 2+2 recently, a lot of people said you should be paying attention to pick up tells, profile your opponents, manipulate their moods, etc, but then sheets, whose posts I have come to respect a great deal lately, said that it's all just too distracting, and any tells or inducements you get from talk just aren't worth it. I find myself agreeing.
So I jammed the headphones on and tried my best to play one hand at a time and not worry about anything else in the mixed limit/no-limit event yesterday. It helped that I could just rock up in the NL because a) there were no antes and b) there was a limit round every half hour in which I had a decent edge. I peaked at 9K before losing a flip AK < TT and then TT was outflopped by 33 in a key limit pot against the same guy. At least my focus was a lot better in this comp. I might not play any more NL comps, that still leaves PLO8, Stud 8, HORSE and limit Shootout to be winding down with.
The mixed event was funny in that suddenly, out of nowhere, it became a cavalcade of the stars ! In order of bustout we had Devilfish, Dario Minieri, Carlos Mortenson (who I didn't recognise at first as he's lost so much weight), Kenny Tran, Joe Hachem (unbearably smug) and Noah Boaken. Noah was the only one who outlasted me, and certainly played as well as any of the others, albeit Dario and Kenny both got coolered and weren't there very long.
Finally there was one lol donkaments moment. A complete egg sat down next to me and started sucking up to Hachem. "Where have you been Joe, living the high life ?". Hachem just grins. "Well, " says the egg in complete sincerity, "you deserve it".
# posted by Andy_Ward @ 6:07 PM 
