Mean Gene

An Extremely Short Post

Before we get into my pathetic whining, we must send out huge congratulations to Hank, who has been hired by the obviously wise folks at Full Tilt Poker. It seems like huge news in the pokerblogger community comes nearly every day. Unfortunately, the post that follows does not fit in that category.

Let's not beat around the bush--I'm playing some awful poker. I could try to explain away my recent run of awful results by parroting the Party line that I'm getting killed by the fish and eventually my luck will change. Well, no it won't, not if I don't start playing better. I just got knocked out of a SNG because I lost my freakin' mind. The shortstack on my left and I was keeping up a merry little chat, guy seemed nice, he got short because of a tough beat. Moron that I am I was playing this SNG, chatting with this dude, and also peeking at the mayhem at the blogger table. Focus, Gene.

Short dude goes all-in, it folds to me in the big blind, it's only T150 more for me to call, I have 8-9, two live carDs, what the hell? I lose, dropping me down to about T700. Brilliant. Next hand it's folded to me in the SB and I go all-in with 2-4. Not 2-7, mind you. He calls with A-8 and even though I spike a 4 he deservedly hits his ace on the river and bounces me. This is not an unusual out for me lately. I'm givin' chips away, and this has gotta stop. I'm stinking out the joint. I need to do some studying, do some thinking, and play much better. I know I can play better, I'm rusty, but I've only myself to blame.

Perhaps I was distracted because Otis made an appearance at the blogger table and bragged about how he'd hung out with the lovely Isabelle Mercier for a bit while he covers the PokerStars WPT event. No, I definitely was distracted, as I wondered if he or BG or AlCantHang had the decency to mention my name...probably not.

Speaking of ACH, I was at a party Saturday night, I was getting my sixth or seventh beer when I passed the rather comprehensive bar mine host had set up. There was an unopened bottle of Southern Comfort sitting there...no, I shouldn't open it just to take a taste. See, I don't think I'd ever HAD SoCo before, as I tend to stick to the ales and lagers. But when I went for my seventh or eighth beer, the bottle was opened. Well, why not, seemed a pokerblogger thing to do. Poured myself a splash, took a sniff, and drank it down. And what came to mind was this--why not just buy a fifth of Robitussin? Sweet stuff, kinda coaty on my tongue. I remember what happened the rest of the night, so you know I stopped right there.

Actually, I could've used some SoCo after our volleyball game tonight. We play in a co-ed league, it's competitive (meaning, if you don't know what you're doing, you could get hurt) but it's not Olympic caliber. We're probably the 2nd-to-worst team in the league, but we're pretty good, we gave the champs a scare in last season's playoffs. But we play this advanced system with players switching back and forth and trading spots, and tonight we got so confused that no one had any clue at all what the hell we were doing. The ref actually docked us a point and told us to get in proper position, which was goddam embarassing. I've argued that we shouldn't be playing this system, as we've been doing it for nearly 4 months and we STILL have no clue what we're doing, but I've been vetoed. I nearly quit tonight, I was so pissed off. We made fools of ourselves. And yet we nearly won the 1st and 3rd games. I love playing, yet every time we leave the gym I'm muttering to myself in frustration. This, perhaps, is not the best frame of mind to be in when playing poker. The 3 beers I drank afterwards notwithstanding.

As I said, an extremely short post. Christ, I have so many posts marked as Draft in my list that it's giving me a complex. Maybe a long writing session tomorrow, no poker until my brain comes 'round.

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