Hey folks:

Came back to WV for a short vacation. (I grew up here.) We're staying at a really badass chalet about 3/4 of a mile from the New River Gorge bridge. Gonna take the wife and stepson on their first whitewater trip. I offered to take them on the upper New River for their initial foray into the cold froth. Nope; they would have none of that wussy stuff. (Class I and II) So, at 11:30, they'll get their "baptism" in the Class IV and Vs of the mighty New.

I surround myself with gamblers.

awesome. so you're rafting right? wear your seatbelts.

Yessiree. (Even I wouldn't kayak those waters.)

And I'll make sure that their "seatback trays are in their upright and locked position", too.

my little bro had been playing poker since before it was in style; back in the 90s anyway. back then 7 stud was the big game in tunica.

so in 2003-2004 there was a weekly NL home game going on. i started playing in that home game and i was an absolute terror of aggression when i got comfortable in playing it. every week i was consistently the biggest winner in the game playing purely on instincts and aggression.

my brother and his friends considered themselves good and when this guy(me) that knew nothing about odds or pf hand strength or pot equity or any other concept that was related to a poker skill set came rolling in crushing them, they all attributed my success to running good. part of that is true, as i could hold close to any two cards postflop and many a all-in was called when i held a deceptive two pair(like K5o vs. AKo on a K52 board) and stacked them.

a while after playing in that game, we took a trip to tunica. it was my first casino poker experience(i had been to vegas twice but i didn't play cards) and i played 4/8 limit. i lost my arse. as a result of that trip, i began reading/learning about poker. i remember when the concept of pot odds clicked for me, i called by bro and said, "man, now i understand what you guys are talking about with all your 4-1 and 5-1 talk!" after that, i found 2p2 in late 2004 and lurked for several months before i registered in 2005.

because i played 4/8 LHE in tunica and got my butt handed to me, i wanted to be able to beat THAT game. additionally, i started hearing about online poker and got registered at UB which is where i donated at .25/.50 and .50/1.00. i read the forums everyday, and happened upon small stake lhe when it was in it's absolute heyday. back then the regs were guys like qtip, jake the snake, hobbsman, jason t, shant, w. deranged, nate tha great, chris daddy cool, bakku, guy on tilt, entity, joe tall, the dude, among many others that have moved on to bigger and better things. it was also the time when jake the snake started the first 2p2 digest, "the small stakes digest". back then the content in the forum was so high, there was a digest done EVERY WEEK! if you get bored and want some good reading, go to the post cry me a river did that is stickied in this forum. read the weekly digests from mid to late 2005. they are great.

anyway, a couple buyins and a few years later, here i am.

Hey James-

You've done some rivers before, right? Do you, or anyone else, know what the air temperature needs to be before necessitating a wet-suit? As I type this, it's 59 and overcast and I've got a blanket wrapped around me on this here deck. I'll admit it's a little warmer where I'm sitting 'cause the hot tub is rolling out the steam.

Low content preflop question....aimed at Kit.

Table composition: BB is one of the worst players I have ever seen. There are 2 props behind me, one who likes to cold-call the other of whom appears to be the mother of all nits. SB is also bad, and there's a drunk guy in the HJ who also plays bad (limps in with 83s, only fires a bet on one street after flopping a queen high straight heads up against me just cause the board was one suit). CO and button are unknown but certainly not scary.

UTG raises. He opens light but is positionally aware. UTG+1 folds. I have 88 and am next up. What do I do here? Awful bb will come long 100% of the time, and it's pretty darn likely at least one and maybe 2 people will cold call the two if I do. If I 3-bet I'm likely to get him to myself, or perhaps in a 3-way with the bb. My standard operating procedure here involves a fold, but I'm trying to get out of tagfish land.

Um, do I have to plan to say something useful for my 3400th post? I hear that's when you become a poo-bah....do I have that right?

Oh and check this out. Since August 1, 2007.

Why jesse, everything you say is "useful." When you become poo-bah, you have to post the winning powerball numbers 3 minutes in advance. Kinda like a BBJ- and you have the losing hand, but the table gets a piece.

Nice graph Jesse! I wish I ran errrr, uhhh played as well as you do

Actually...winning like that would not have been good for me. I only learn things the hard way. Plus I don't think that I am as good of a player as you are.

Ha. Just play live. I've been donking up like half the hands I play recently at live 20/40, but when your opponents do even stupider stuff it's easy.

Example A:

Horrible drunk dude raises, one horrible players calls in the sb, I call 96s in the bb.

89J all spades

It checks around.

2

I check, he bets, I call

brick

I check, he checks, I table my second pair of which I'm quite proud, he tables QT for a flopped straight but no spade. zomg, wtf, lol. Imagine I had had a spade...Not to mention I'd have paid him on the river.


I 3-bet AJs and like 3 people cal (the maniac who raised and both blinds). Flop is AJ4. I bet, only one guy calls, the sb. Turn Q. He donk bets his last 5 chips and I call. He has KTo for the nuts. How many bets did he miss here? Did he really call 2.5 cold from the sb? Is that...it can't be!!! He's a prop!?!?!

You live in San Jose, right? You should come down to SoCal and play some. I don't even find live 4/8 players taking 2.5 to the face with KTo here....unless it's commerce.

I would love to play live right now! Too bad I am in the middle east sweating my life away.

I live in redwood city, which from the middle east is basically exactly san jose. did i mention he was a prop? a professional player of texas poker?

Stay cool and don't get yourself shot. You should spread a game, run it over, come back and use the winnings to finance your first political campaign. Then you can resign the presidency and write your memoirs.

I was playing 4-8 at Commerce yesterday, sitting in seat 2. Player in seat 1 was raising lightly. Between seats 3-5, most hands were being 2-bet or 3-bet with a cap every other orbit. I played maybe 3 hands in the first hour.

After an hour the pre-flop action gets folded to me in MP w/ J9o. I decide to get in the game and raise. Question comes: "who raised?"; answer: "the super-tight player". I get two callers; bet the ace on the flop, one caller; bet the turn; I take it down. (Should I have shown my hand here?)

A couple of orbits later I limp AA UTG expecting seats 3-5 to generate some action for me. They don't and I get 6 limpers to a A-rag-rag flop. I decide to check-raise because I have a set; oops, only one ace left; it gets checked though. I bet the turn and river w/ two called and show my limped AA.

This has metagame effects for the rest of play because a couple of players think I'm nuts. When I raise w/ AQs and take down the pot w/ TPTK. Seat 6 was starting to tilt. An hour later I 3-bet QQ in MP and take down a decent pot. Seat 6 is steaming: "and he limped w/ AA".

/lc hand checkup not worth it's own thread

4/8 live at 1:30am, table has almost broken, we're down to 5 players.

Villain is laggy preflop at full table, let alone shorthanded. Sometimes in full ring he'll border on maniac preflop, but is a lot more sensible postflop (in that he won't 2bet/3bet unless he has something, but he will incorrectly chase bad draws). Definitely can bluff.

Hero 2bets AA UTG, Villain 3bets, others fold, Hero 4bets, Villain calls.

Flop: xxx unconnected, unsuited rags

Hero bets, Villain calls.

Turn: K

Hero bets, Villain 2bets, Hero 3bets, Villain calls.

River: K

There's 11 BB in the pot. Hero's plan is to check/call. Ok?

has anyone here every used adderall?

last week my goal was to put in a long session but after 8 hours my focus turned to **** and then by the 10th hour i was ready to mail it in. this kind of sucks when you have to drive 1 1/2 hours each way to get to the casino and i would prefer to be able to put in super long sessions.

anyone know a good way to stay awake? 15 cups of coffee isnt cutting it...i was thinking adderall but im not sure what excuse i could conjure up to get a prescription.

Last night was kinda interesting for me. Playing 8/16 live.

I am down like rack after about an hour or so. I get up after my button to walk around and take a whiz. I come back to screams at my table and about 20 people looking over it. Jackpot. Some lady has AJ vs some guys QQ on a board of AAxxA. Small JP share of like $340. I'll take it. Funny thing is that like 2 people are really stuck a this point to teh tune of 1k and it takes like an hour to get paid for our JP shares. So they both keep rebuying a hundy at a time and bleed it all off.

The best part of last night was that I was able to pull off not 1 but 2 river check raises Finally.

I have 48s in the BB in a kill pot. Kiler is a lame laggish player on my imm left. He checks his kill option, one caller SB in, I throw in 2 chips. 4 players. Flop is 4xx. I dont have an exact plan yet. Checks around. Turn A, I check, Killer bets sort of fast, folds to me, I just flat. River 8!!! I check, Killer bets I almost beat him into the pot with a C/R, he calls, MHIG.

Other Sessy hand I have a flush and OESD on the flop in EP. I C/R the field on the flop, bet the turn with still my big draw with the board pairing, get raised, I call. HU. River my flush comes in, I check, he bets, I Raise! Aiyah! 2 C/R's in one hand for me. MHIG.

Good God man, what is happening to me? I think I have been reading a lot of James and Kit posts

ADD meds make you crash hard after a while.. they make you focus really well for a while, I guess they would be useful towards the end of session for a few hours.

As someone who actually has ADD (and I never use the drugs I got prescribed a while ago, they make me feel like crap after a few hours), I could play for like 30 hours straight w/out flinching. That's the upside of having ADD and an activity that is interesting/stimulating to you.

I would say maybe eat a little more than you currently do? Food really helps you stay sharp, even if it's just like a protein bar or something every few hours, maybe tossing a couple real meals in there as well. And save the coffee for the end of the night.

I pulled off a river check-raise yesterday. I have QJ in EP. Flop is T97. Turn 6: guy bets. River K. Guy to my left gives off a bet-tell. I check, he bets, another raises, I 3-bet. MHIG.

I think taking drugs to enhance your poker playing ability is, in general, a bad idea. I also don't think it's really a short-coming to only be able to play for like 10 hours...i go to crap around hour 4 if I'm not careful...

That said I have a friend with ADD who loves his drugs. Also the caffeine solution for me can easily be overdone and make me jittery, plus it makes me have to hit the men's room way too much.

Is it a rule that you get jackpot share, even though you didn't get dealt cards? Or did the others volunteer it to you (cards wouldn't have been the same had you been at the table blah blah blah)? Or did you have to ask?

BTW: Congrats! First jackpot table?

It sounds like he got dealt a hand and walked away, then came back to madness. I've wanted this to happen to me

NH sir, NH.

Hey Kit, I think you missed this question from Jesse.
Jesse, FWIW, I think you answered it yourself. 3bets likely gets HU in position. Only UTG being a nit, would make me hesitate. IMO, Raising>Folding>Calling.

At this place they changed the rule some time last year where as long as you don't miss a blind you get a share if it hits on your table. Makes it nice if you want to take short breaks during the super JP hours they have. Play your button, break and come back to take your BB if you time it about right. I like to take several short breaks anyways during any session so it works out well.

2nd. First one came almost exactly to the day last year where I just happened to sit down at a table imm to the right of Hyperrrprank(didn't know him yet but I was in good position!). It was a 4/8 full kill table and I noticed that he bought in for 2 racks & was playing solid. I guess he noticed something about me cause he asked if I played a lot and if I kept up on any internet poker forums etc. We both sort of figured out that each were 2+2ers at about the same moment. Pretty cool. The next day we started bouncing hands off one another and strategies. We still do almost every other day it seems. It truly is very valuable to be able to do this and I highly recommend it to anyone. It also helps to have someone who can listen to when you are running like cripe.

Skip this post, it's an obnoxiously long recount of the rafting experience I spoke of yesterday-

The wife, my tragically over-weight 12 yo stepson (ss hereinafter) and I arrive at the pickup spot 20 minutes early. (Wife told me she needed extra time to buy a hat.) She shops, ss and I get helmets and PFDs (personal floatation devices- for those of you old enuf to still call them life jackets), and eventually board a 1960s vintage school bus with 29 other adventurists. Each bus seat accomodates 2 people so wife and ss have to take an open seat together near the rear while I take the last open seat that's behind a 45-50 yo lady and her teenage daughter.

Now the weather had warmed up substantially so it's pretty hot and NO, there's no AC, bt you can open the top half of your window by pushing opposing slide buttons and pulling the window down. The single mom/lady with daughter, while accomplishing the maneuver on a moving bus, looks at me and says,

"If I'm blowing you too hard, just let me know."

Now there's about 10 different responses that immediately come to mind (no pun intended), but I settle on, "Not possible."

She doesn't get it; but, it's not lost on the teenager who just "busts-a-gut." Mom, obviously perplexed at her daughter's seemingly random eruption of laughter, says, "What's so funny, Heather?"

"Oh, nothing Mom. You wouldn't understand, anyway."

I then realize why she's a single mom.

On the way to the "put-in", we get the usual safety talk, interspered with a smattering of bad/corny jokes.

Guide giving talk: "... and I'd like to introduce y'all to Joe, your driver today. Joe's our third best driver."

Voice from the back of the bus: "How many driver's you got?"

Guide: "Three." Muffled laughter ensues.

The first order of business at the river is to determine a) who's in which boat and b) the seating arrangement of your boat. Each raft has nine passengers and a guide. Anybody wanna hazard a guess as to what happens when my guide, Jerry, shouts, "I need two more people to fill this boat."

As fate ordained, there's only two men, other than the guide, on my boat. And, for those of you that don't know, there's a good deal of what should be, coordinated paddling- especially when traversing Class V rapids. A "show of hands" reveals that only me and single mom have previous whitewater experience. This is, I ****-you-not, her 75th trip down the same stretch of water. Platinum anniversary notwithstanding, I conclude that she will forever be a single mom. But I digress...

The order of paddlers will be:

Port side: "yours truly" on the bow seat; very athletic, 15 yo identical twin right behind me; my overly-plump 12 yo ss; wife; and single mom. I should now add that she's been on a "on a first name basis" with our guide, Jerry, who also happens to be a single dad and is clearly feeling like he just "drew the short straw."

Starboard: other athletic 15 yo twin at the bow; teenage daughter of single mom (who cannot supress a little giggle each and every time she catches my eye); twin's dad; twin's mom; and guide.

So there's your cast of characters. The port side has two people that have ever held a paddle, one of whom is seriously preoccupied with "getting lucky", and the other side is, well, either overly enthusiastic or scared ****less. I just can't tell which... yet.

Shove off- mercifully into a large stretch of calm water. First paddling lesson ensues.

Guide: "It's important that we all paddle together, so watch those two up there in the front of the raft." (He doesn't say "bow" because he can sense that this crowd is, for the most part, "nautically-challenged.") "When they stroke, you stroke." Everyone nods in what I later learn is a "false-tell" of listening comprehension.

He continues: "When I say 'right forward, left backwards', this side of the boat (now pointing at me- but still not saying "port side") will paddle forward, and y'all (now pointing starboard) will paddle backwards." More nods.

I must digress yet again. You don't exactly "paddle backwards" since the current is quite strong. Rather, you place your paddle into the water- hopefully perpendicular to the boat- and, if all goes according to plan, a turn is effected. So, truth-to-tell, all you've gotta do when it's "right backwards" and you're on the right side, is to plunge your paddle into the frothing rapid and hold on. My wife later privately confides this is her "favorite command." And I must admit that she executed the maneuver flawlessly. I know this now because I parted with $52.95 to buy the cd "that forever memoralizes your whitewater adventure down the scenic New River."

On your mark, get set, GO! First rapid approaching. I shrug at this paltry Class III, knowing full-well that guide and yours truly- being on opposite sides of the boat- can get this motly crew safely to the other side of the rapid, given that my expectations were not high that we'd get any help in doing so. I wasn't dissapointed. We got to the other side. We didn't get any help, either.

All righty then. Remedial lesson #1. "Paddle the same way those guys in the front of the boat paddle. Everybody understand?" More nods. Not the "overly enthusiastic" kind, tho. These were- you guessed it- the scared ****less nods. But, single mom, veteran of 75 trips, wasn't nodding at all. No sirree, not the slightest "up and down"- not even a bobble- of her head. She flashes that conspiratorial, "I knew that" look to her "I'm gonna get lucky tonight, short-straw doomed" guide. I noticed that he sort of scooted a little starboard.

Fast forward three hours. We have transmogrified from the paddling cacophony into the the paddling symphony. One mind, one heartbeat, nine simultaneous strokes- and one terrorized little fat kid hunkered down in the middle of boat that looks up just in time to glimpse the specter of the "Double Z", the Class V rapid that defines our outing. It's all come down to this. Man against nature. The sheer force of the collective human spirit. A single mom on a single mission. And I, your humble scribe, was there.

"A thing of beauty is a joy to behold." (I once read that somewhere.) We approach the rapid. "Left forward, right backward", the guide shouts. The video confirms that my wife has plunged her paddle into the whitewater with a force that would have cleanly divided a 200 lb block of ice. "Break", the guide screams. All paddles come cleanly into the air and the raft turns as if willed by some supernatural force. The apex of the "Z" is history.

"Paddle hard right; left backwards." It doesn't get any better than this, folks. Undaunted and unintimidated by the Z, the crew responds brilliantly. The Z's last acute angle is but a memory in our collective consciousness. What a ****in' ride! We emerge intact. The ss stands up triumphantly in the middle of the boat. An image forms slowly in my mind as he does so, no doubt from some long-forgotten movie where a 1700s schooner defiantely lifts her mast after passing through the hurricane. The guide leads everybody in a "paddle high-five." All paddles are lifted to the center of the boat and the "clack" of plastic-on-plastic reverberates thru the Gorge.

The "take out" is only thirty minues away. Cold beer, a cigarette and a bus ride with single mom are within my grasp. Guide tells 15 yo athelete on the starboard bow to "jump out and hold the boat" as we approach the landing. I'm pretty sure she heard the "jump out" part. Her not holding the boat as I was disembarking proved problematic for me; but, the rest of the "crew", especially single mom, found this scene most amusing. The videographer, much to their dismay, was downriver. I recovered from my unceramonious exit with some of my pride intact.

No long-winded story is complete without an ending. (I told you to skip this post, didn't I?) We get back on the bus. I will forever be amazed that humans have a herding instinct that makes horses and buffalo look like mountain men. I am the last soul to board the bus. Everyone has their same seat. Everyone- including single mom and snickering teenager. I suppose the "it's only a ten minute ride back to the lodge" announcement has prompted single mom/veteran of 75 trips, to turn aboutface and whisper, "It's customary to tip the guide, you know."

Me: "I was gonna do just that, but I've got to get back to the car and get my wallet. How much is the customary tip?"

Single mom: "Well, Jerry's been my guide for along time and he really worked hard today. Since my daughter came along, I'm gonna give him $20; but, I've got to go to my car, too"

Me: "For real?"

Single mom, beaming with pride, and no doubt with anticipation, says, "Yeah, for real."

Me, in a very loud voice that I am certain the entire bus can hear: "Hey Jerry, is it customary to tip the guides?"

Jerry, ever the diplomat, says, "Only if you had a good time."

Me: "Does a hundred dollars a head sound about right?"

Jerry: "Hell, for a hundred dollars a head, I'll throw in a good time tonight."

The last I saw of single mom was "ass and elbows" across the parking lot.

Sadly, that wasn't in the video, either.