Monday, September 19, 2005

Poker & legos

After that last post, I just spent the first half-hour of work looking at "vintage legos" on ebay. Most of what I found were lego sets from about 20 years ago. I couldn't find any like Grandma had, which were probably at least 20 years old 20 years ago. Her's were just these white blocks, and they didn't fit together tightly like the ones we all know. You could only kind of rest them on top of each other. But they were definitely legos. The first lego thing I got was in 1982 or 1983, called the Starfleet Voyager. I never actually put the thing together, I would just make up stuff with the pieces. Other prized lego possessions of my youth were the Knight's Castle and Cosmic Fleet Voyager. Click here to read about the history of legos. Remember Playmobil? Those were like Legos for rich kids. Man, fuck Playmobil.






Oh yeah, I was supposed to write about poker, huh? Things are going okay. I'm about 44 hours in to phase 1 and just above $9/hr. I'm still losing more than I need to in my losing sessions. I can think of two instances during the past 44 hours where I had taken a few beats, noticed I was playing bad and told myself to get up, but didn't. If I had followed my advice in just those two situations I would be over $15/hr. In fact the only reason I am at $9 is because I had a dream session yesterday where the deck was punching me in the face. I made $250 in one hour. At one table I was up $321 and at the other I lost $65. $321 in one hour at one 2-4 table is just insane (considering I'm averaging less than $5/hr per table). Three times I had a pocket pair up against a higher pocket pair and three times I hit a set and got paid off. Once I had 99 and flopped quads against KK. These sessions happen, just like the awful sessions where nothing holds up happen (like when idiots holding underpairs keep flopping sets against your overpairs). The fact remains is I'm still losing more than I need to. I'm still letting myself lose focus and donk off money when things aren't going my way. I hope I can learn from this and correct it, but so far I haven't been able to. Next time I recognize when I'm in that situation I hope I can just get up, take the loss, and come back when after I've cleared my head.

As far as the plan goes, I've decided to play out the 100 hours of two-tabling 2-4, and then move up to 3-6 (phase 4) if my bankroll is above $2400, or 400 big bets. It should be there in a few weeks, if not sooner. Otherwise, if my bankroll is not above $2,400, I will add a third table of 2-4. I think I will use this 400 big bet guideline for moving up limits in the future. I will then drop down limits if I hit 400 big bets of the next lower limit, so if my bankroll hits $1,600 after moving up to 3-6, I will move back down to 2-4. I will have a cushion of over 100 big bets, so I shouldn't have to move back down unless I hit a really awful streak.





Finally, you should read the book Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich. It's a really good story about the MIT blackjack team (actually, I think it was just a fictionalized account of what could have been one of the MIT blackjack teams), although I think it could have been longer. It seemed to end abruptly. Also the author has a boner for excessive descriptive language. For example, when the group was flying into Vegas, he described the lights on the ground as "tiny little pinpricks against a liquid sheet of black." Gimme a fuckin break, dude. Also he described an airplane window as a "glass egg." Dude, next time, call it a "window." Anyway, I still recommend the book. It was a really good story and I couldn't put it down.





That's all. Have a nice day, please.

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