The Art of Losing
I spent last week in the Tunica casinos. How did I lose chips? Let me count the ways... :)

• Spend Chips: This is the standard method for flushing chips down the drain: call with hands that could match the board to make large hands (suited, connected, low pairs, two face cards, etc.), and promptly miss any form of hand better than second pair. Repeat until the blinds catch you.
• Don't Spend Chips: I guaranteed a midpack exit from a $340 super-satellite by not calling a relatively small raise from one of the early hands...when you have $3000 in chips, 25-25 blinds, and K9 suited, it's ok to call a $125 preflop bet. I folded, and missed out on flopping an ace-high flush. With two raisers. So, instead of doubling up (or tripling up) early, I got to sit there and blind my way down to nothing over the next two hours.
• Bet Passively: I came up empty in the first few satellites I played, mainly because I would not play anything short of large pairs, and allowed the blinds to catch me. Blinding out in (n-1) place isn't any fun when only the top (n) players get paid.
• Bet Aggressively: At some point, it became obvious that any pair was a calling hand, and most folks called with Ace-face. This meant any pair was a raising hand. So, raise I did, to the point of dumping all my chips preflop anytime I found myself with a pair, or a suited ace. Twos, threes, and fours worked just as well. At least twice I found myself flipping a coin for access to a 4:1 payout. At least once I found myself betting A-10 against a face card pair. I lost all of these.
• Pay off the suckout: I thought I'd broken the habit over Christmas, but I still handed over $50 to an 8-out draw at the omaha table one night. I flopped a set of aces, had a flush draw and a straight draw, and lost to the other suit's flush draw.
• Don't Speak Unless Spoken To: In a satellite, I failed to collect from someone I'd trapped, mainly by not speaking, when I should have blurted out something stupid. Staying largely quiet let the player fold for a $40 loss (my gain) instead of doing something silly with his chips. In a separate game, I allowed another player to fold his set (against my straight) by addressing his questions directly, instead of changing the subject.
• Speak Out of Turn: In another satellite, I decided to run my mouth when I knew I was behind in a hand. Doing so prompted the other player to call me, sadly, for all my chips and an early exit.
• Play Satellites: Eventually (too late, as it turned out), I realized the single-table "satellite" tournaments were just a waste of time. The blinds are way too fast and short to even think about useful play. I've won a few 40-player tournaments, and these were set up more like a crapshoot.
• Hop bets: And speaking of crapshoots, I decided to try hop bets at the craps table this time; I know they're horrible bets, but wow, they're really bad! I must have flushed around $60 in various hop bets over the week.
• Bet the Pass Line When You Feel Off: I was guilty of this for most of the week. I didn't feel right with the dice, knew I didn't feel right, and bet the pass line anyway. Lose, lose, lose. I made the appropriate adjustments on the last day, betting the "don't pass" line until I warmed up.

Shooting in the Dark
I've held an interest in photography since I was a kid; last year I finally made the jump into the digital age with a point-and-shoot digicam (Panasonic DMC-FX9). It lasted about 4 months before the cold of a hockey rink compressed the camera's frame to the point of cracking its LCD panel.

It will cost around $150 and a few hours to replace the panel, including a proper mounting bracket to prevent such occurances in the future. Neither of these options are as fun as shooting blind. I know about how long the autofocus takes to dial in, I can guess the zoom factor, and if the flash is on, I'll find out when I shoot. This is point-pray-and-shoot photography, and the results haven't been that bad. The camera is locked in the multi-shot setting, so I'm getting one (relatively) good shot, one bad shot, and one drunk shot for each picutre.

My main benefit from this exercise is fun, followed by an incentive to shoot straight -- balance, steady hands, and luck all carry the premium of film cameras now.

posted at: 14:16 | path: | permanent link to this entry

One More Thing...
Happy New Year!

posted at: 12:07 | path: | permanent link to this entry

Vacation Time
I'm checking in today from Oxford, MS, home of the University of Mississippi and a nice little coffeeshop, the latter of which I'm writing from today.

Last week, I filled a promise I made to myself a few years ago, by playing a week worth of poker at the World Poker Open in Tunica (Robinsonville, really), MS. I'll post the full story of woe and misery later, but it was a really fun and interesting week. The online poker community really came out of the woodwork, it seemed; they combined with local players and pro players to form a cast of thousands for the month.



posted at: 12:02 | path: | permanent link to this entry