The Bat Cave

I’m not going to lie, I’ve been feeling a serious lack of motivation while I’ve been slumping through my second losing month of the year. It’s April? The fourth month of the year? I’m sitting here with less than 20% of the winnings I had by this point last year. Granted, I had an epic February in 2018 and followed that up with a $25k+ series in the Muckleshoot Spring Classic. Winning one of those tournaments can’t be expected to happen every year.

It’s not really even the losing that has gotten me down. The local game selection has been depressing. Even though we moved in late 2018, Palace is still the closest poker room to my house and where I prefer to play, but the games I’ve relied on for my bottom line have dried up substantially. The 15/30 was running almost every day in April of last year and now Friday nights are the only day I know it’s going to go and even then it’s started to feel shaky lately. PLO was running twice a week and used to be mind-boggling good action. That game has gotten progressively worse, to the point where it’s almost all regulars (and multiple pros) and last week it was dead before 9 PM. I couldn’t even jump in an 8/16 game to get a full day of work because that game was dead already too. PLO has basically zero chance to survive the summer when a number of the players keeping it alive disappear to Vegas for the WSOP. I didn’t even bother showing up this past week and I might shift my priorities elsewhere on future Wednesdays. I mean… I want to do my part to keep it alive, but I don’t have much interest in locking horns with some of the best players in the area for a couple hours every week, hoping some live ones will sit down with us.

Last Thursday I did something I’ve been wanting to do and checked out the Red Dragon poker room in Mountlake Terrace, a few exits north of Shoreline. I was extremely impressed. It’s a nice, cozy room and they were super busy. The real reason I went out there is because I heard they had a 20/40 Mix Game that spreads quite regularly. Ducky and I made the trip and pretty much as soon as we walked in they fired up the 20 Mix game. We started off with a mix of Deuce-to-Seven Triple Draw, Omaha Hi, Razz, Badugi, Omaha 8, Stud 8, and Double Board Omaha. Later, we added Big O and Ace-to-Five Triple Draw and removed some of the other Omaha games.

I don’t consider myself a mixed games wizard, but I was astonished at how soft that starting lineup was. I knew I was the best player in the game and I couldn’t even find a variant I thought someone might be better than me at. That might sound arrogant, but I like to think I make honest assessments. Part of the reason I’ve lost interest in the PLO game at Palace is because I know there are always multiple players better than me in it now. Anyways, almost the whole table in this mix game was playing exceptionally loose and the one guy I thought might be competent before the game started seemed like he was going out of his way to play horribly, particularly against me – like he wanted to put a gross one on me. I’m talking cold calling raises and drawing four cards kinds of gross. Fortunately, that bad beat never happened and I basically had that guy’s number the entire session.

I raced out to a +$2500 start and that wasn’t hurting my confidence any, but while I knew I was running good, I could also see the plethora of horrendous mistakes everyone else was making that helped get me to that lofty cushion. My heater extinguished, however, and I eventually got ice cold and the game got progressively worse throughout the night. It seemed like every time someone left or busted out, they were replaced by a better player and by the end of the night, I was looking around the table and thought everyone was mostly competent. So Ducky and I took off and I had to settle for a +$997 day.

I am looking forward to going back and plan to make a trip to Red Dragon at least once a week as part of my regular routine – even though it’s an absolutely brutal commute.

Last Friday I booked a -$1236 in a good 15/30 game and then I finished 16th in the Main Event of the Little Creek spring series on Saturday. That was yet another deep run that didn’t amount to a cash. Maximum amount of time wasted. Goodness that’s getting old.

I’ve come to the realization that I have a mental game weakness when it comes to busting out of tournaments. If I played 11 hours of 15/30 and lost $560, I wouldn’t be happy about it, but most of the time, I can just chalk it up to a poor day at the office and shake it off. But when I spend 11 hours playing a tournament and don’t cash… well, I find that EXTREMELY upsetting.

Or maybe it’s just because I haven’t been having any good results.

I have now fired 22 bullets in 17 tournaments this year and I have two cashes to show for it. Sort of. One of those cashes was in a tournament I fired two bullets at and I ended up with a net loss. The other cash was in a daily tournament… at a bowling alley… and I have to include that because if I don’t, then I haven’t cashed for a profit in a single tournament in 2019. I am currently down almost $7300 in tournaments this year for a sexy ROI of -91%.

Could this be the year that I finally lose money in tournament poker?

That reminds me… who wants to buy my World Series of Poker action?

Seriously. I’ll be selling a package here shortly when I get a better idea of what my schedule will look like. Uhm… I’m due?

Saturday was my last day playing poker in a casino, so that’s pretty much it for poker updates.

I posted some movie reviews yesterday. I’ve also been updating my TV Show Ratings and 2019 Album Ratings. It seems like most people have no idea what new music to listen to, so check that out if you want to stay up to date on good new content. ScHoolboy Q released a new album last night, so that’s what I’ll be listening to today.

I saw Avengers: Endgame last night. I’m going to see it again on Tuesday before writing about it, so here’s my quick, no spoilers thoughts: it was fucking awesome.

I will be live blogging my 15/30 session tonight, but it will also be the MLB debut of Vladimir Guerrero Jr., so I’ll be watching the Blue Jays game on my iPad while I’m playing for the first 3+ hours of my session.

Starting Lineup: Megaphone, Chief Wiggum, Part-Time, Ducky, and four non-regs

4:23 PM: I’m on tilt already. First off, Palace’s WiFi connection is fucking worthless. I can’t even watch Vlad Jr.’s debut on my iPad because it won’t connect so I’m watching it on my phone… which means I can’t type at the same time.

4:40 PM: And I just lost to her again: flop top pair with JTdd, turn a flush draw, and lose to bottom pair. I have literally lost ten pots in a row to her, dating back to last week, and I don’t think she outflopped me in a single one of them. Wtf.

5:23 PM: Ducky opens, the lady crushing me 3-bets, I call from the small blind with two jacks, and it’s 4-way action.

Flop is 982 and it checks around.

Great start.

Turn is a king and I think that’s a card I should send around and it checks to my boss and she bets. I’m content to show this down with passive action so I call and that leaves us heads up.

The river is a jack! I check. She checks. And shows ace fucking king. Holy shit. How is that a thing? It’s not like she’s giving me air. She bet heads up in the last pot, so… wtf? It’s just the Poker Gods randomly messing with me? “Even when you win… you lose.”

5:49 PM: Raise some limpers with KJ of hearts and then c-bet 4-handed pot on T93 rainbow.

The turn is a queen and I’m pretty stoked when Megaphone check-raises me since we are in Overs now and I get to make it $150. He calls.

The river is another ten and that’s not cool, but when he checks it over, I go for value and he just calls and then mumbles about how “gut shot was his only out,” which could only be true if he had, uh, 93?

Anyways, after spotting them a rack immediately, I’ve been given a reprieve on my session after these last couple hands and get to start fresh.

6:31 PM: This game is flimsy already. We already have an open seat and no list and half this lineup could up and leave at any moment.

On the bright side, Flea finally decided to make a return to red chip games.

7:45 PM: Here’s a list of hands that its impossible to win a pot with: AK, AQ, AJ.

Megaphone is at his Megaphoniest. He’s been running extremely good and garbage hasn’t stopped spilling out of his mouth for hours now. One time, he was rambling and I looked up to see that not one player was listening to him and then I caught the dealer looking off into space like “lawd, save me” and I burst into laughter.

Nothing exciting to report. I’m getting a decent amount of big aces and losing with all of them. That sums up my first four hours so far. Currently sitting near -$500 again.

7:54 PM: In related news, my phone is almost dead, I don’t have a portable charger, and the USB ports at my table aren’t working.

8:53 PM: Here’s how good I’ve been running the last three months:

I come back from a break talking to my wife on the phone and see like $600 in chips sitting between me and seat 9 and then Taz comes over and says “these are going here” motioning to me and I’m wondering if someone thinks I won a High Hand or something… and then he says, “I should just leave them here” and I respond, “I don’t get it” and finally it dawns on me that those are his chips and he’s making a joke that I’m going to win them from him anyway so why waste time and I’m like “bro, you haven’t been around here for a while, huh?”

9:49 PM: Someone limps, I raise KK, there’s a call, button 3-bets and I cap this 4-way pot.

I bet flop and turn on QT53 and still have three opponents when another queen hits the river. I don’t think any of them have one, so I go for value and get called in two spots! My hand is good and I have sugar for the first time today.

Not bad. I was -$800 less than two hours ago.

10:12 PM: Heater alert! I followed that KK hand up by flopping top set with AA in a multi-way 3-bet pot and then flopping a full house with 82 suited from the small blind in a limped pot and getting way too much action when my hand seemed pretty face up.

Suddenly I am up $700.

11 PM: Welp, this game is on the ropes. We are now 5-handed. Nice surprise from that aces full hand from earlier. It went up for High Hand with 19 minutes to go so I forgot all about it and it held up! Send an extra $400 my way.

I’m not going to try and blog and play short-handed so I’ll post a final tally when we wrap things up here.

Final Score: +$2085

Short-handed was good to me, even with Ducky getting a J32 flop with JJ vs my 33 in a blind vs blind hand when we were 4-handed.

Feels good though. Good enough to put my month back in the black.