Glimmer

If you want to see a humorous link, just go straight to the end.

Busy week so far...everyone is back from vacation at work, and we're cranking things back up again. That's good and bad, I guess. I'm managing several smallish and one big project right now, all in different stages of development (software development). The big one is near the beginning, which is my favorite part...we are fleshing out high level functional requirements and getting into some detailed functional design.

For those of you not familiar with software design, you usually start from what you want the software to do, then figure out how it's going to do it, then build and test it. I used to absolutely love the "how" part, technical design. Now I'm more interested in the "what" part, functional design. I think that this is the most creative phase of development.

I've played a couple sessions since last post, with better results, playing pretty well, still not running all that good. I think long term, I probably run worse than just about everyone, and the fact that I can overcome that and still win is pretty amazing.

I kid.

Last night, things were going pretty well, but I didn't quit well, and it cost me the better part of a stack. I was kind of thinking about calling it a night or at least taking a break, having played for a couple hours. It was late, but I thought my focus was still OK, and I was just starting to get a little tired. Then, I found myself in the SB with 75 and a limpfest already. So, I did my part and completed. TAG in the BB checks. Flop is 765 rainbow. I led out for just a bit over pot, the BB raises smallish, and everyone else gets out of the way. At this point, the warning bells were firing, but since he could raise pretty wide, I put in a 3-bet, to $16 (this was at 50NL, BB had a full stack and I covered). He min-raises me.

Villain is a textbook TAG from all the numbers on my HUD, albeit on the nitty side of TAG. By that, I mean he does not appear to ever get out of line, and he is also a monstrous winner over the hands I have on him (36 ptbb/100 over 1.5k hands). Not the guy to get involved in a big pot with. What do I do? Jam it in there. I'm vaguely thinking he's at worst got top pair and an OESD, but more likely he would shove with that...the min-raise is most likely at worst top two but more likely a set or straight. I mean, I'm thinking that, and yet I still jam it. There's the other part of me going, well he could be FOS this time, and I've still got some outs against a straight. Yuck.

It wasn't frustration...I was playing well and up at the table, and was pretty sure I was up for the session (don't check until the end). It was kind of bad discipline, but more than that, it was just being tired. Due to time constraints, I want to eke out as many hands as I can so this will be a balancing act for me, but it will do no good if I overstay my effectiveness at the tables. I'm thinking about making myself sit out for a couple orbits per hour(ish) even if I don't think I need to do it. Just to make some mini-quits, and so that I can ask myself before starting up again if I'm still on my A game and if the table is still right to play. Actually, that's usually not an issue because my sessions are not much more than hour long chunks whether or not I want it. So, maybe there are better things on which I should focus.

Hmm, I spent a lot of time talking about that one hand, and the end, showing the importance of quitting well, I guess. But throughout the session, I thought I played pretty decent. The only other 100BB+ hand I lost was against a massive maniac when I flopped top two and he turned a gutshot. Don't feel bad about how I played that one. Maniacs get paid when they hit. He was running amazing, though. That was the only big hand I lost to him, but it wasn't the worst he did to the rest of the table...he also won with runner-runner flush and a two-outer on the river against some other guys. Sick.

I'm way behind on my session reviews, though, so I'm stopping here, and will comb through my last several days to look for some hands I can post. I also need to email some hands to my coach with my thoughts in them.

OK, for the humor I promised. I've been following Jman's well on 2p2....an amazing thread, if you haven't read it yet. Someone kindly linked this Jman post from the archives. On a sad note, I realize after reading stuff like this that I am not nearly as funny as I would like to believe.