Sloe Times

In the poker game of life, women are holding 72o and always cracking your nuts.
--sloejack

Last month was actually an up month. Of course the trip to Gen Con generated a hit against the bankroll, but that is what it is there for right? I would like to thank the fish on Party and Pacific for helping fund my vacation.

My current goal is to have poker cover my Gen Con vacation next year. In figuring out what I spent, along with what I wanted to spend I figured that if I could average $20 a week from now until Gen Con Indy 2005, I would have it covered. Given that my play last month was severely cut short (relative to previous months) for a variety of reasons I figured that this was a reasonable goal.

Something funny I've come to realize lately is that I love playing poker, I love talking about poker, I hate grinding through games just to build up a bankroll. The most fun I have playing is with people I know, being somewhat social, and basically not taking things too seriously. Grinding up a table by myself can be profitable but boring. So what's my motivation in playing? To have some fun, make a little money on my mediocre to decent poker skills and pacify the gambling monkey. Sure, I have held the fantasies about putting in the time and practice enough to try and replace the income I work for with income from a hobby, but that chances of me actually being good enough to follow through on that are pretty damn slim. Just to maintain equilibrium we are talking about needing to regularly pull down $9k-$10k a month in net winnings. Besides, there are some new things on the horizon that are destined to compete for my game playing time. The new Star Wars Galaxies expansion is coming out in about a month. Also this winter Microsoft is releasing Settlers of Catan for playing online.

I'm still working on organizing my thoughts about card rushes, their psychological impact on a table, and stratagies for maximizing this. I've appriciated all the feedback thus far as it's helped confirm some of my thinking or adjusted it as needed.

In more relevant news...

I finished Amber and Ashes last night. That was a great read. Of course now I'm annoyed because the book just hit the bookstores this week and so it will be some number of months before the next one comes out. *sigh* I did order the Annotated Legends so hopefully that will be here soon and that will tied me over. In the mean time I'm reading the next pulp novel in the Tom Clancy Op-Center series, Call to Treason, it helps the two hour train commute every day pass with relative ease. I've had a hard time really starting Small Stakes Hold'em but I'll probably try and start and finish it before the month ends and at least figure out if there are any parts worth re-reading to improve my play.

Since Iggy mentioned it I gave the Badbeat tables a run yesterday at $2/$4 while I was doing some system patching for work. It was interesting how often people would call you all the way to the river and then fold at the river. It was an up session for me so I didn't notice the rake being too oppressive. The thing I did notice is that the jackpot was over 100k and the qualifier to get it was quad 8s, go figure.

Since I was up pretty late from patching last night, and I am going to be doing it again tonight I opted to work from home today which means basically catching up on documentation and keeping the right eye on a poker table. I stumbled across ICP purely by accident (I hadn't had him in my buddy list until today) and since there was an open seat at his table I figured why not have a seat and at least be social. Some spectacular (bad) play on this table and it was ripe for the picking and getting beat down. At one point I was +30BB but walked away for lunch +15BB. ICP didn't admit it but I suspect my chatty ass was a bit of distraction since he was multi-tabling and getting his big hands cracked by truly bizarre cards. The conversation that ensued there is what generated the quote above. It seems much more appropriate than the associated Rounders quote. Speaking of which, I've just been told to clean my office... Ah well, it's for a good cause, I've got friends coming in from Canada tomorrow and what is building up to be a decent home game for Sunday.