Chris Halverson’s Blog

Since I have a week before my classes start again, and since my son decided to stay at my parent’s house tonight, I jumped back into the fray at Empire. Mixed night overall. I made the mistake of being bored of 50/1 and played a bit at 1/2 and lost 10BB. At my 50/1 table, i was up 10BB. In the end, BB-wise it was a wash, but money wise it was a mistake.

After chatting with Iggy, I have decided to refocus a bit on my game. I honestly get a little frustrated at times grinding away at 50/1. I can (within normal variance) beat 50/1. My problem? I read people like hdouble, Penguin, Grubby and others (no offense if I left you off, but the point had been made) winning hundreds of dollars in on night (more than my entire bankroll) and I get thinking. Then I read others saying how they went on runs of 75BB or so and I think how nice that’d be at 1/2. Then I make a jump one night when my bankroll really isn’t ready for it and lose a bit, say 10BB. The problem is, with a limited bankroll, 10BB at 1/2 is very different than losing 10BB at 50/1. It’s painfully different. There’s also times when I’d lose more than that. Then I get upset and move back to 50/1 exclusively. Every time my roll has taken a hit it’s because I got “smart” and tried 1/2 too early. I’ve beat 1/2 games, so it’s not that I’m really worried about that. The problem is the bankroll. Right now it’s not enough to handle even normal variance at 1/2. Add this with Henry’s advice that he’s given me lately and I have decided to refocus and work my bankroll up, Fuzz-like, to $1000 at 50/1. Right now this seems insurmountable, but I have never really had a goal in mind while playing. By giving myself a goal at 50/1 I feel I will accomplish a couple of things. First off, I’ll work a lot on my game, honing it a lot more and being able to cheaply work on the finer points (ie. post-flop) parts of my game that are lacking. Secondly, when I get to that point, I will have enough roll to jump up to 2/4 or so and be able to withstand the variance. Ironically, right now (of course, it’s late and I’ve had a couple drinks), I’m looking forward to this. I think I needed a little focus to my game.

OK, how about some poker? Best play of the night: AsKs in LP. I’m all set to raise when MP raises. This guy has been pretty aggressive all night. I just call. Flop comes up 5s7s10s. I flop the nut flush. The two people left check and I check along with them. Turn comes Ah. Check, bet, I call, other guy folds. River is 6h. Guy bets, I raise, he re-raises, then types in the chat, “Bet well”. I do, with a re-raise. He pauses, then calls and my flush drags in a 13BB pot. I normally don’t slowplay, but I thought it would be too obvious on the flop to go for it. I got the extra benefit of having an A come on the turn. I’m pretty sure I got a couple extra bets out of the one guy, especially when the A fell.

The rockets actually won for me tonight. I got them UTG and raised. Four callers, flop comes A77. I decide to play it right and bet, one caller. Turn is a 4 and I bet, the other guy folds. Not a big pot, but the rockets never pay off for me, so it was memorable in that respect, and a full house at that.

T minus 9 days until Vegas. My buddy who’s going with is a B&M virgin. A month ago or so, he mentioned going to the casino sometime before we go, but I was gone for two weekends and this week is our last chance. I emailed him today and said we should go this weekend. He’s trying to sell his house and such, so he started giving lame excuses like cleaning up, painting, prepping for open houses and other nonesense. I said we had to do it! Well, he just called me (9PM) and asked if Friday night would be OK. OK? Hell ya! He’s got season tickets to the MN Wild NHL team, and there’s a game that night, so we we won’t be going until after the game (about 9:30-10:00 by the time he gets to where we’re meeting), so the line will be killer, but it’ll be fun. He hasn’t played much (any?) poker at all, so of course what will happen is that I’ll lose big and he’ll be a big winner. It’ll stil be fun, even giving up the Friday Party fish fry. B&M is more fun, even if it’s less profitable.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 30th, 2004 at 12:06 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.