Leaving the Scene of the Crime

I won't be playing at the Crime Scene Game any more.

I had a good showing last night, and made myself whole from the previous loss, which was nice. I had fun playing, as I usually do there. I like hanging out with most of the players; I get along great with the hosts. The social aspects of the venue are a major part of its charm.

But.

I've watched as meaningful percentages of the pot disappear again and again, in the form of redbirds palmed and pocketed by a dealer. I can live with a rake, as long as it's not excessive, but this practice is just unacceptable. If you are running a cash game, you need to make your rake predictable and visible. Sneaking money out of the pot destroys the integrity of the game, and turns an honest profit-making enterprise into thievery.

I don't want to play where people are being ripped off, no matter how congenial an environment it may be. It makes me sad to have to say goodbye, and I bear no ill-will to anyone, but I'm done.

[Update: Thanks for your supportive comments, friends, but I'm going to refrain from publishing or commenting further on this matter. Out of consideration for the many hours of enjoyable play I've had at this venue, I'm going to just let it be.]

Easy Come, Easy Go

Except for, y'know, the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments.

Last night's session at the Crime Scene Game was a prime example of why I dubbed it that in the first place. It was a bloodbath. I took about five brutal coolers. I should have left after the first one: I flopped a boat, Jacks full of Queens, and my opponent with Q8 caught the 8 on the river.

Things did not improve after that; I will spare you the gory details. But it seems that the pendulum has swung back to Business As Usual (aka "Crush Cardgrrl's Hopes & Dreams").

Little Swing Back

I've now made 4 return visits to the Crime Scene Game, and booked 4 winning sessions. This is a pleasant change of affairs for me. My last session was a monster, and more than made up for the rather unfortunate series of bust-outs in higher-buy-in tournaments of late. I flopped a couple of huge hands, made a couple of sensible laydowns, and used my Miss Tighty image to take a few pots I had no right to. I played well, and I ran better than average. What's more, I didn't get coolered or bad-beated once, which was refreshing.

On the negative side of the equation: someone stole my phone, with all my data in a freely accessible state, and Apple's wipe mechanism didn't work in a timely-enough manner. I spent most of today on the phone with ATT and Apple getting my old phone up and running, and then the REST of the day changing passwords everywhere I could think of.

I hope to god the evildoers just jailbreak it and wipe it clean. Needless to say it's been a stressful and highly unpleasant experience.

Word to the wise: PUT A PASSWORD ON YOUR PHONE RIGHT NOW. (Yes, it's a tad inconvenient. But what I've been through in the last 24 hours is a whole lot more inconvenient.) And if you have an iPhone, DO NOT SUSPEND SERVICE ON YOUR ACCOUNT UNTIL YOUR WIPE COMMAND GOES THROUGH OR YOU ARE PRETTY SURE IT IS NEVER GOING TO. (I didn't do that, and the net effect is that the wipe command went through all right, but to my newly reinstated original iPhone, which resulted in a marathon support call to fix.

Apple/ATT want $400 to replace my 3GS. That ain't happening. I'll limp along with my OG iPhone until either Apple comes out with a newer model that I find irresistible or until next December, when I once again become eligible for the lower (i.e. within reason) pricing.

Miniature Rush

Not much going on in poker for me lately. I'm busy with other projects and the weather here has put a total kibosh on playing live for about two weeks now.

I have, however, been dabbling in the occasional session of Rush Poker. I'm playing 10NL (which, when I think about it, makes me laugh… this is the same woman who bought in to no less than four WSOP events last June!). My bankroll on Full Tilt had been decimated by tournament variance and some sloppy play on my part. I had, quite literally, only a few bucks left.

I've turned those few bucks into over a hundred playing 10NL, in about 12 hours of play, never buying in for more than $5 at a time. The composition of the player pool is pretty clearly divided into regulars and fish. I avoid the regulars and nosh on the fish. You will of course run into the usual cooler or bad beat, but never feeling pressed to play a hand out of position ~ and not wasting any time worrying about one's table image ~ makes for a pretty low-stress experience.

Rush poker is position, hand-reading, math, and cards. That's it. If you've got decent skills in those areas, micro-limit Rush Poker is like printing money (almost 100 big blinds an hour!). Well, okay, like printing small denomination stamps. But you get the idea. Nom nom nom nom nom.

Knock Me Down With A Feather

I entered the WBCOOP 8-Game Mix tournament without any expectations whatsoever. Hey, free is free, right?

My strategy for the game was simple: press my edge in the games I know well, and play super-duper tight in the ones I don't. That, and catch some cards occasionally. (Poker is all skill, baby!) The turning point for the evening was getting paid by two opponents when my full house improved to quads. The coup de grace came in a stud rotation when I ran into three full houses in quick succession. THREE!

To my astonishment, I nevertheless managed to finish in fourth place, and grab myself a $215 ticket to a SCOOP event sometime in the future. I was the short stack when the six-handed final table started, but I was able to pull even before I met my boaty waterloo. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I didn't feel particularly outmatched as the field narrowed. I guess there just aren't that many 8-game whizzes in the blogger world.

There's something particularly satisfying about taking $0 and making something of it. How cool would it be if my freeroll rush extended to the next event as well?

Speaking of which: does anybody know whether I could register for a SCOOP event and then unregister and take the $T? On the other hand, I'm wondering whether the weakness of the field in the 8-Game Mix would extend to a similar tournament in the SCOOP. If so, it might be worth trying my hand at that instead of the more familiar NLHE format.

I Wanna Play!

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on WBCOOP to play.

Registration code: 095798

All the cool kids are doing it, so I want to too! Besides, with my new relaxed attitude my results are bound to be better, right?

What A Rush

I've been playing much less frequently, and generally enjoying it more. Despite starting with a below-average stack, I managed to claw my way to fourth in the A League's end-of-quarter tournament. I hadn't played a lot of games during the season, so the fourth place freeroll finish gave a nice little boost to my ROI.

I joined another tournament series based in Arlington, mostly made up of folks I originally met playing pub poker (and some B Leaguers). I was really pleased with the way I played this game, and had I won my coin toss I would have been well-positioned to make some noise in the tournament. It was a rebuy, which isn't my favorite format. Other games are not rebuys and should suit me even better. I cheerfully recouped my investment in the tournament by playing in the cash game that broke out alongside.

I made returns to both the Capitol Hill and Crime Scene games, where I have achieved modest profits. All in all, 2010 results in live play have been satisfactory, and I've been having fun with it ~ which is the name of the game for me now.

Online, the massacre of horribleness continued. For my own amusement, and to prove that it's not all in my head, I've been taking screenshots of the insanely bad beats I've been dealt. Originally I planned to post them to the Book of Bad Beats, but I don't have the heart for it. It's too depressing. Maybe one day I'll do a massive dump (and I use the word advisedly) of all of them.

But then the heavens opened and angels sang and Full Tilt delivered its latest Spawn of Satan: Rush Poker. Rush Poker is multi-tabling without the multi (although if you're an insatiable action junkie you can indeed multi-table rush tables… cowabunga!). Here's everything you need to know about Rush Poker:

• You see around 300 hands an hour.
• You can play all of your hands in position if you want to.
• Your HUD software may not be as useful, but if you play long enough you will start to recognize some of your opponents in the pool.

Long story short, I was truly down to my last $5 on Full Tilt when I started to play .05/.10 Rush Poker. In two sessions of about an hour and a half each, I have built up to about $60. SIXTY DOLLARS playing 10NL. It took me a little while to make the strategic adjustments needed, but I gotta say, for a quick, ADD-addled hit of profitable playing, Rush Poker is the 'nads. (Well, until the doomswitch kicks in, anyway.)

There are a couple of annoyances in the software, chief among them being that even if you select the "check/fold" or "fold to any bet" options in the big blind, you don't get whisked automatically to a new table unless you click the "Quick Fold" button too. That's just dumb, since the big blind is a timewaster in this game. I also worry that Rush Poker will cause the bad players to go broke quicker, give up, and never come back. I can only hope that Full Tilt has done some studies that show people are more likely to reload in this format than in others.

Looking ahead, I expect to make a trip to AC in February and I'm heading to Las Vegas again toward the end of March. The Vegas trip should be a Trifecta of Fun: PAO Meet-Up, AVP Meet-Up, and precious time with the Grump.

And finally, we're hearing that Charlestown WV will be opening their poker room in July (or thereabouts). That's just a couple of easy highway hours away, much less grueling than the trip to AC and definitely doable as a day trip. Sweet!

The Joy of Poker

Those of you following along on my tweets already know the outcome of my trip last weekend to Atlantic City: a big steaming pile of break-even.

And you know what? That's just fine with me.

I had a little mini-revelation on this outing. Despite my decision to let go of the pro-poker dream, I was still playing as if my livelihood depended on it. Now, generally, one might think was a good thing. Discipline, etc. And that's undoubtedly true.

But playing professionally is also notoriously a grind. It's especially a grind when things have not been going one's way for a protracted period of time: the bad results are depressing, and bad results often lead to bad play, which leads to more bad results. It's the most vicious of vicious cycles.

My first day was a downer. Lose lose lose lose. Bleah. No fun. Lots of folding, discipline aplenty, then one dubious decision and buh-bye stack. At day's end, I vowed to myself that I would play my A game in the Circuit tournament. My one and only goal was regret-free poker.

And I did. I played for six hours without making a single error. I watched glumly as the correct folds I made would have turned into table-stacking monsters, but I made the right choices. I was colossally card-dead most of the time, and was presented with very few viable stealing opportunities. More than six hours in, I still had a starting stack, and it was shove-or-fold time. I won a few blinds and antes. I folded KJo to a raise and re-raise in front of me and missed the flopped boat (d'oh!). I finally shoved with pocket 8s and lost to AK behind me.

I was now $700 in the hole for the trip. But I was feeling pretty good about the way I'd played in the tournament, and I wasn't especially tired. I decided that, since I was unlikely to be back in AC in the near future, I might as well mix it up in the cash games again and this time try to actually enjoy it. I took $1000 to the table and promised myself that I was going to play well and have fun: no scared money here, no ubernitiness. I brought out my cheerful, social persona. I was going to have a good time no matter how the cards fell.

And I did, oh yes I did.

My hand selection criterion became: will I have fun playing this hand (in this position, for these stakes, against these players)? My folding, calling, betting, or raising criterion: which action will be most fun?

And because I consider winning money more fun than losing, this didn't change my gameplay a great deal. What it did change was my attitude.

I proceeded to play for six more hours, during which time I completely recouped my loss and made a few bucks to boot. I began to remember why I got hooked on poker in the first place. I rediscovered my inner recreational player.

So that's me, now: I'm a recreational player, and that's okay. In fact, I like it! A great psychological weight has been lifted. My little hobby more than pays for itself, plus I get free hotel rooms and food too. And I now have license to play JUST FOR THE SHEER FUN OF IT. Wheeeeee!