I really need to learn how to fold to the Friday night donkeys. I have not yet decided whether I played or ran worse tonight. If you saw how bad I ran and I can't decide whether it was worse than my play...well, let's just say that I could have played tons better. The silver lining is that my hand reading was excellent. I just need to trust it!
I tried to salvage something via chat...but even that didn't go well :P.
Soccer opening day is tomorrow, and at least I'll be well rested for it.
A friend of mine passed away in the wee hours this morning, after a nearly 3-year battle with leukemia. That was about 2.75 years longer than he was expected to live, given the type of leukemia he had and that the bone marrow he got from his brother did not cure him. He was not a close friend (although he was to a few of my good friends, and they will be taking this a lot harder than I), but enough that I had a chance to be inspired with the grace and toughness he and his family fought his illness.
I last saw him a couple months ago, and even though he was clearly not doing well, he not only didn't want to talk about it, but he was trying to crack jokes and keep the conversation on anything but him. I was at our mutual friend's house, who lives next door to Tom. They also worked in the same field. Our friend was bitching about some pretty mundane office stuff -- like I'm sure we've all done, whether an actual office or the bad beat/run bad stories -- and Tom seemed to truly empathize with our friend about all this little crap.
I'm sure I'll have a little better perspective my next poker session or two. I'll close with Tom's admonishment to all of us in his emails and journal entries: "Get busy living."
Played a pretty standard hand recently where I checked K2 in the BB and flopped top and bottom pair on a K72 2-tone flop. SB folds, I bet just under pot, limper folds, second limper calls. He's a 17/14 multitabler. Turn and river bricked off, and both of those streets went I bet, he called, and he flips over 22 for flopped bottom set. Standard play for me, and I took a note of his play.
On review, I started to think about how that note would affect my play against him. I came to the basic conclusion that it wouldn't change much when I have initiative. He's still tight (folds to steals 80%, folds to c-bets 72%), so I'm not going to miss any chances to steal or c-bet against him, regardless of that note. So, if there was a change in how I play against him, it would have to be when he has the lead. I was spending a little time trying to come up with hypothetical situations where that note would change my line against him, and I failed to find a satisfying one (and rather than keep at it, I figured I would write this).
In general, I started thinking about how often a note I've taken has changed the way I've played a hand, especially when I've got lots of hands on someone. I go through good and lazy note-taking phases, but even when I have notes on someone, I'm not sure that I actually use them very well. I fall back to stats most of the time when I adjust my play from a readless line.
I think this is quite bad. While it's nice that I understand how to use stats to adjust my lines, a consistent theme among top tier players is that a note-based read is far more important than stats. But it doesn't do any good to take a note, even a great note, if you can't use it. If I can't pretty easily come up with a situation where I play it one way without the note and another way with the note, then I'm not doing it right. I'm not talking about the super stupid things people do, rather exploiting villains' more subtle and frequent leaks.
Went into San Francisco on Saturday to visit with my mom and hash out some stuff that we've needed to talk about for a while. Took the train, and she was going to pick me up, then we were going to go have lunch. After waiting for 10 or 15 minutes, my wife called to say that my mom had been in an accident with a bicyclist. Everyone was OK, but they were headed to a bike shop about a 10 minute walk from where I was. On the way there, I was talking with my stepfather, who said the cyclist was a bike messenger. He didn't know the exact details of what was going on, but he said that the bike messenger said he was going to sue my mom, and that he had $1800 rims on his bike and wanted a bunch of cash for them, blah blah blah. I guess he shut up about that when my mom suggested she call the police and they could take an accident report :).
From what my mom said, it's not clear to me who was at fault. She was partway into an intersection making a right turn, but was waiting for a pedestrian to get onto the sidewalk. It sounds like she then completed her turn just as the light was going from yellow to red, and hit the guy just as she was going from a standstill (which is why he didn't get hurt at all). The guy had run his light, but my mom had hit him. It's probably the guy's fault, but it was $175 out the door for the bike to be fixed (so much for $1800 rims, lol), and my mom just paid it and they signed something that said nothing further was required, so she just wants to be done with it.
Yesterday, on my way to play golf, my wife called to let me know that in the middle of the night, my niece went into labor at 4:30 AM, or thereabout. A little over 22 hours later, she gave birth to her daughter. So, I'm now a great-uncle, crap!
I would try to rationalize to you guys that my sister-in-law is older than I am, and that she had her daughter young, and in turn that her daughter (my niece) is having kids early, but what's the point? I'm a bunch older than most of you guys anyway, so who cares?
Anyway, golf is coming around a little bit, finally. 2nd round in a row I was in single digits over par (7 over, yesterday), and put several swings in a row together that felt good, although there were definitely some real clunkers in there, too.
We went to the beach after that, which we don't do that often, even though it only takes about an hour. Well, on a nice day like yesterday, it usually takes a bit longer than that because of traffic, but still. Usually it's too cold for me to want to get in the water, but it was over 80, so even though the Pacific this far north is pretty chilly, I got in with the kids and body surfed with them. I went out a bit far to try getting some bigger waves -- I can't go too far without freaking out my wife and daughter -- and for a bit was probably 20 or so yards away from a group of pelicans fishing, and I even saw a couple seals, which was pretty cool. Then it occurred to me that I don't really know how aggressive seals are when they're fishing, or if there were any seal pups nearby. But it didn't matter, because the whole procession were following the fish and moved away pretty quickly.
Work and life continue to get in the way, and my volume has been low, even for my standards. I am lucky to have been doing well, as I have been doing the bare minimum of studying/thinking about the game. That said, I do feel like I'm in a decently solid mindset when I do play and study, so the hard work over the months leading up to this plateau have been helpful. I should be able to at least start cranking up the study volume again soon.
Wife and kids went to see my nephew compete in a livestock show at the county fair, plus go to the fair, plus hang out with her brother and his family, plus my in-laws. So, I thought I would play a couple sessions after work. Bailed on the 2nd session, though because the first one was a combination of lots of coolers and several poor hands by me, including an ultra-spewy multi-street bluff followed up by a pretty bad river call. The latter wasn't for a huge amount, but felt like it was a bad sign to continue. I was running bad, plus fairly close to each other, I made a too-aggressive, and a too-passive play, so there was no reason to think I was going to be sharp in the second session, even though I was not that tired or anything. I won't even say it was a good quit, since to me it was pretty obvious.
So, instead, I spent the rest of the night clearing some old shows from the DVR and researching some replacement IEMs for my iPhone. Man, what an exciting night! Hope all is going well with everyone.
