Soon

Don't you always have a late spring?

It's most likely just a subjective feeling after a long winter, but usually we have at least something like intermittent spring, with a few weeks of +10 - 15 mixed in with the snowfalls, while this year we have had a few days of warm weather and rain/snow the rest of the time. On the other hand, I didn't really check the weather back home when we were in the Canary Islands. We had snow outside when we left, but when we returned we had a few days of spring, so maybe I just missed this period when I was enjoying some sun

Lucky Easter? Gambling It Up With a Drunk Maniac

The flop looks fabulous for me, JTT with a flush draw. We are playing PLO5 and I am holding JJ, so I have top boat. I started the hand with around 450 EUR in chips in front of me, and I am stuck after managing to run a big bluff straight into the nut boat a while ago, but this could be the hand that turns it all around.

I am first to act, and I am debating leading vs checking, but in the end I opt to check. Unfortunately, it checks around. The turn comes a low card. What to do now? I really should lead to start to build a pot in case someone has something, but in the end I check it anyway. The next player checks, but the player after him bets out for 40. It folds back to me and I once again debate what to do, but elect to take the passive route. My opponent is one of the most solid players at the table and he certainly has something to bet into three players on this board, so I decide to lay the trap, hoping to get some more value out on the river.

The river is another low card, lower than the jack at least, and I check it for a third time. My opponent tanks for a while, and I try to remain calm while my inner voice is screaming BET, BET, BET! And he obliges by putting out a bet of 65. I shuffle my chips, debating on how much to raise to. I have a tad under 400 left in my stack, but the opponent has been playing very solid. Not sure if he would lay down a boat against me if I pot it, but in the end I opt for a small check-raise to 185. For that price he shouldn´t be able to fold any boats against me and might even look me up with trips or something, figuring that I am way ot of line.

***

As I drove up to pick up a guy (M) that is the one I have the most contact with in the poker world (he had been sick for a while and asked if I could drive him if I take the car to the game), I think to myself about the people around me in my life. How come so many of them are into things like drugs, alcohol and gambling? I mean, in theory I know that there is a whole bunch of people who don´t drink, who would never consider snorting cocaine as an acceptable way of spending a Friday evening, whose gambling habits stretch as far as buying a scratch card every now and then or dropping a tenner on the lottery.

Sure, I have been lucky enough not to really have any friends who have suffered any major consequences due to their actions, and most people I know are in one way or another more or less succesful in life, and have enough wits about them to keep their demons more or less in check, but somehow I always end up with the crowd that tilts towards degeneracy. Same thing with M - of all the people I´ve played poker with in the past year, he is the only one who I communicate with somewhat regularly even when not playing. He incidentally happens to be a guy that has recently kicked a massive cocaine habit and who plays poker 4-5 times a week. I doubt we´ll ever be close friends, but still - out of all the gambling people, I am drawn to the more degen end of the gamblers, and they are drawn to me.

I guess that is because I am the same myself. I am a degenerate at heart. Although I find things like family life fulfilling, it... it just isn´t enough. It´s never enough for me. I guess that´s why the song Shallow hit so deep when I first heard it, the lines In all the good times, I find myself longin' for change / And in the bad times, I fear myself basicaly decribe my entire essence of being. When I wasn´t happily married with a family, I was longing to find a good woman, to settle down. Now I find myself longing for the youthful days of degeneracy, and although I am old and wise enough not to act out on them, the longing still remains. Being able to go out and party, to sleep with different women, to gamble whenever you feel like it, to not have to plan your life all the ****ing time but just live instead. Fortunately, with age comes wisdom, and I realise that if I had all those things, I would probablý be more or less spending my life longin´ for a change.

***

As he announces "all-in", I am no longer so happy. Of all the players at the table, there are exactly two players I would not want to hear these words from after check-raising the river. I double-check my cards to see if I haven´t misread my hand before calling - there is no chance that I am folding JJ on JTT for 200 more, since he could very well have JT here, but I am far from thrilled with his all-in since it is either quads or JT. And I guess a portion of the time he might even nit it up here and just call JT as well, so basically I fear the worst.

I say "boat" and flip over my JJ. He smiles a wry smile, says "not enough", and flips over his hand - of course he has quads and I lose a 1k pot. **** happens, it´s a not-that-unreal cooler in PLO, however the feeling is one of the most miserable in poker according to me. You go from all giddy, your thoughts only focused on excracting all the chips, to get all of a sudden hit by a ****ing train. I shake my hand, push over my chips, and say "that´s it, I´m leaving". M, who is sitting next to me, asks me why. I reply that I am out of cash, and that it´s not my night.

He tells me to wait a little, and goes talk to the host. Now, M owed me 600 EUR, which he was supposed to pay me back next week. I did ask if he could pay it back earlier, he said that he´s a bit low on cash himself, but I did only bring 600 to the game since I didn´t feel like losing more than my tournament profits from last week. He returns and says that the host gave him credit, and asks how much I want to play with. I say 300, and get three black chips. After all, there was an increasingly drunk player with deep pockets playing increasinglý erratic poker, putting in a bunch of chips blind, so there was huge value in staying.


***

After the cooler, I can´t get anything together. The game is expensive - seeing a flop costs from 20 to 60 EUR, depending on the straddles. If it´s 1/2/4, you can basically count on 1/2/4+pot from the drunk guy. If it´s 1/2/4/8, it´s the same, but a larger pot bet from the drunk guy. The last drink he took seems to have put him over the edge from wild and loose to complete, all-out maniac. It doesn´t take long for the table to adjust - the standard strategy from players looking to play a hand is now to limp any holding and then call the pot-bet, three-betting the top of their range to get it HU or three-ways against the maniac.

During a smoking break, M tells me that the maniac (who I´ve never seen before) has a tendency to play quite seldom, but if he goes on a bender he puts in massive amount of money. Last year he managed to lose 20k in a 2/2 game, for example, and he just keeps potting and potting. Of course, every now and then he hits a hand and stacks someone. I just keep bleeding chips, so I use another 200 of credit from M to add on, but it´s not looking good.

I don´t recall the hand that did it for me in detail, it was quite a standard situation where I got it in with a good draw and bricked out. I don´t even think the maniac was in the hand, but it was just one of those spots at quite low SPR where you can´t fold, can´t really call, so you jam the flop and flip a coin. I recall that I still have a hundred left that M owes me, I am feeling tilted although I am not really playing bad, but I am now stuck 1100 EUR so why not lose the last 100 or spin it up? Now, I could probably have gotten M to vouch for me, and maybe the host would have given me some credit (or I could have wired some money to someone), but I am sober, and when sober I am not really that much of a degen at the table. (As a side note, I have decided not to mix the times I use cocaine with playing poker, at least not for more money than a few hundred if I somehow end up at a game - when using coke, my aggression just goes through the roof, and it is high enough as it is when sober.)

And, due to doing some changes in how I manage my company, basically meaning I will do it much more by the book going forward, I am living on a third of my regular income for the next three months. I had a tendency to just transfer money to my private account when needed, and have my accountant write it all off as dividends in the end of the year, but that´s not really a good way to run one´s business. If I would get audited, I´d probably be forced to pay some extra taxes etc., and I am also stuck with a huge tax bill every time I hand in my yearly financial report, and I almost never have enough cash on hand to just pay it off without hustling hard for a few months. So I am switching to the correct way to do it (dividend payments and tax on dividents paid on a quarterly basis), however, this will make me live only off of my salary for three months, which is kind of tough. I should have done this years ago, but hey, better late than never.

***

I fold a couple of hands preflop, since they aren´t good enough to GII with the maniac. And then there is a bomb pot. And finally I flop something really good. I have top two on both boards, nut flush draw on one board and a straight draw on the other. The pot is 70, so I just jam my last 87 (in this game, slight overbets in these spots were accepted by all players, and preflop we often rounded 24 to 25 to make it easier to count the pot and to speed up the game, etc). Maniac calls, another player jams for 200, maniac calls and off we go. I make the nut straight on one board, but on the other board my two pair don´t hold and my draw misses, so I end up getting half the pot - still enough for a double up.

Maybe my luck will now turn? I pick up another pot, and all of a sudden my stack is 300. The next hand I play is against the maniac. I call his pot bet on the flop with a pair + wrap, make middle two pair on the turn with 74, and while this is a hand I´d normally consider folding or just calling OTT, against this maniac I was more then happy to check-raise all-in. To my surprise, he folds for 100 more after potting it for 160 OTT, but I won´t complain.

And then the ice returns. I just can´t connect. The maniac also has his goodrun come to and end, donating around 1500 EUR to M in the span of a couple hands. He talks to the host, reloads for 500 and the very next hand punts half of it in his usual fashion - potting in the dark preflop and potting the flop when checked to. It is now getting late, almost 3 AM, and the maniac looks to be running out of money very soon. I look down at a pretty sweet hand, AQJ97ds with A and Q high suits, There is straddle to 8 on by the maniac, after a few limps I limp myself, and sure enough he pots it. Now the UTG player re-pots and all of a sudden I am faced with a decision - do I want to go three-ways against aces and a random hand (maniac is never folding). I am tired, and I need to go home soon, and a win here could get me somewhat unstuck at least, so I say **** it and jam as well, as does the maniac.

I instantly say "one time only", since it´s either go big or go home. The UTG player flips over AAJ42 with nut hearts, and the dealer puts out the flop. Which has me basically drawing dead - A82 with two hearts. I pick up my phone and vape, as the dealer burns and turns and puts out an offsuit five on the turn. As I am about to get up, I see the dealer put up the miracle 6 on the river, giving me the nuts. All of a sudden I am sitting on a healthy 750 EUR stack. The maniac goes to talk to the host, and then returns and asks if he there is anyone sober that can drive him home so he can pick up more cash. Obviously no more credit. I didn't hear their conversation, but judging from the body language, the host looked to explain that he won't get any credit and that he should go home and sleep it off. However, the maniac has no plans of sleeping it off, and one player agrees to drive him, and off they go.

Now, from a financial point of view, leaving this game was just pure madness. As soon as the maniac would return, the game would be massively, massively +EV, and quite easy to play - see flop with good hands, fold the rest pre, and pile it in when you connect. But I need to be up at 10 AM or so, I am feeling quite tired, and I for sure haven´t played my best tonight. I punted a stack into the nuts (the situation was decent to run a turn-river bluff in, but my hand wasn´t since I didn´t block anything), at least once in a bomb pot I missed marginal value on the river, and the hand that I trippled up with is also objectively very questionable. So I say one last orbit and I´m off.

During this orbit I lose some money, but in the end I cash out 600, so I basically only lost the money that M owed me. It´s actually not a bad result for a night where you first punt a stack and then get massively coolered in a 1k pot.

***

The next day I text M and ask how the game went and if the maniac did indeed return. He had returned, M had lost all his profit and then more, and the maniac had redistrbuted both that money and his own money to the rest of the table. Just to give you an idea of how good of a game it was, I´ll share a hand that M texted me.

There is 800 in the pot as a tight player and the maniac go to the flop. Flop is AQ8 with two clubs. Tight player jams for 700. Maniac turns over J6652 no clubs face up while considering his actions. And... calls. He ****ing calls with a pair of sixes, no draw. The tight player, of course, had AA - with the nut flush draw and gut shot straight draw as backup.

So, yeah. Good game, bad result. Life goes on.

Tournament Thursday

A new player has just sat down - arriving at the break and after the rebuy period. He bought in, made a rebuy and addon instantly, and started with around 10k in chips. I am playing in a 50 EUR NLT rebuy tournament at the same venue as in the last post - after three days alone with the kids and their constant bickering (wife was at our summer house) I needed to get out and relax, so I chose to do so by gambling. As I arrive I feel good, I was at the swimming pool for the third time this week (looking to make four workouts a week my standard), stopped at home to drop off my clothes and then drove to the game.

The tournament was supposed to start at 7 PM, but evidently was delayed - as I sit down, I notice we are still only midway through the first level. Oh, well. Might be forced to throw in a rebuy or two more than I had hoped for....

***

A few hands after the rebuy had ended period a player who had called ahead to get his seat at the end of it arrived to his stack of around 10 000 chips (2500 starting stack, 2500 rebuy, 5000 addon). Now, I´ve seen him around, always extremely drunk, although I´ve only played with him a few orbits in a tournament, and then he was nursing a shortstack, so no real idea about his playing style - this time he is sober though, says he got so drunk the day before that he got lost walking from one bar to the next, so no booze tonight. Anyway, out of the first five hands, he plays four of them, coming in for a raise in three of them, and winning three of these hands without showdown.

It folds to him in late position and he makes it 450 to go (blinds at 75/150, he has around 11-12k, I cover). I am in the small blind, so I decide to make a play with 86o and raise to to 1500. I toss in the chips, only to hear the dealer announce "call". What? The dealer says it´s a call, since I accidently took a 500 and a 100 denomination chip, instead of a 500 and 1000. Oh, well, there goes my plan, I think to myself as I get ready to check-fold the flop.

Now, my plans got changed quite a bit when I saw the beautiful T97 on the flop. I am pondering what to do - in theory I could lead, since this should be a better board for my range than the PFR, on the other hand, he should have noticed that my intention was to raise and in the case this board should be better for him than for my three-betting range, I guess. So I just check, hoping that he takes a stab at it. And he does, he fires 700 into the middle.

Now I think for a while again - do I raise it up right away or do I keep trapping? Being OOP on such a wet board I figure that I have no reason not to raise - after all, I could have a ton of draws and other funny hands that I could make a play with, so I make it 2100 to go. Now he goes into the tank, shuffles his chips, and... announces all-in! Boom! I snap call and table the effective nuts, and he tables 99 for a set. So we have a sweat!

The board runs out blank and I win a huge pot, which brings my stack up to something like 26 000. Chip lead city!

***

It´s funny how poker is a game of pivotal pots, with the hands inbetween mattering so little. Sure, over time it´s all supposed to add up, but the pot above was basically the single most important spot that decided how my tournament went. In most cases, I would just fold 86o here. And then I win nothing. If I don´t fold, I three-bet, and then the outcome would be the same as now if he wouldn´t fold preflop, or I would have lost a fair bit of chips if he would have decided that I am FOS and pushed on me. But now, now I did something that I never do in this spot and got rewarded for it.

Of course, playing a large stack is quite easy, and also gives you the means to apply selective aggression to accumulate more chips. However, I had a pretty bad run of cards, but still my stack kept hovering slightly above the 30k mark for most of the time. After an hour or so it was final table time - there were only 15 entrants, so it didn´t take that long, and heading into the final table I still had the biggest stack.

I keep adding to my stack (and I think I managed to bust a player somewhere along the way as well), but players aren´t dropping out nearly as quickly as the blinds rise - and all of a sudden we find ourselves playing quite shortacked, despite a pretty decent structure. I have built my stack up to something like 45-50k as we are playing five-handed, which amounts to roughly a third of all chips in play, so I am in a good spot.

And then comes the next pivotal spot. The button pushes all-in for around 17k on 600/1200 blinds, and I look down at ATo and call. Button flips over AJo and I lose. Instead of having the biggest stack, I know have the second or third largest stack, and have just made my position so much worse. In hindsight, I feel that this call if horrible. I have no idea what the charts say here, but ATo is a hand that only dominates a small portion of the button´s all-in range, while there are at least as many hands that dominate me. And in most cases where I am not dominated, my opponent will have a pair or two live cards. And if I call and lose, I am no longer in a position to draw advantage of the rapidly approaching bubble (three places paid).

And then comes another pivotal spot. Two players have limped and the small blind has completed. I have somewhere between 30 and 40k, they have between 10-20k. I look down at KTo. Now, what should I do? As they all limped, I am not too worried about them having really strong cards, but on the other hand I could just check and see what the flop brings. However, if I jam, I feel there is a good chance that I take down 3600 chips uncontested - after all, what do they have that they can limp-call with? I announce all-in and after a long tank, the player to my left calls. God damnit! And what's worse, he shows up with ATo here, having me dominated.

If I lose this pot, I am down do something like 10 blinds, maybe 13-15 at best, and my tournament life is in significant danger. Of course, the player that called was the biggest stack of all the limpers. However, the flop does bring hope, as it comes down QJx, giving me an open-ender. Turn is a blank, but the river is the ace! Saved by the river, and back at 50k+ in the stack. I am still not sure if it is a good play to jam here to apply max pressure, or if checking a marginal hand is best. I am so very behind in tournament theory so I have no idea. And I am certainly not sure of the call with ATo is a good play here, even though he had me totally dominated in this particular instance.

As we are now on the stone bubble, play tightens up even more, although I manage to find two hands where I raise, only to be forced out of the pot by a jam. I steal some blinds here and there, get no action on my premiums like AKs, but in the end the bubble bursts. We discuss a chop, with our stacks being 55k-46k-45k, and blinds at 1500/3000, playing on would basically mean flipping for piles of cash, so we do an ICM split, netting me 630 EUR (as I was the smallest stack) with the largest stack taking 685.

A net result of +430 EUR. Second tournament I play this year, second time I split the prize pool. So, who will stake me for the WSOP Main Event and some side events?

***

I drive home at around 1:30 AM. For once in my life I did the correct thing after a tournament, realising that I am tired and that the game doesn't look that good, and went home instead of jumping into the lovely and alluring streets of (mainly) PLO. On the life front, things are calm, no degeneracy in sight. Tomorrow night I might meet some friends for dinner, on Sunday my club has a really important derby so I will be on edge the whole afternoon (game starts at 4 PM), but otherwise it will all be calm and relaxing.

Next Saturday I do travel to Stockholm to meet some childhood friends and attend a game in person - my last visits have ended up with us ending up in the casino, and one would have to be a completel idiot to bet against that happening yet again, but we will see what we end up doing post-match. It's going to be a lot of fun though, at least that much is guaranteed!

EDIT: Sorry for the poor grammar and writing at times (mixing past and present tense for example) - I am in a bit of a rush (got to make dinner) and have no time to clean it up.

Saturday Night: Do the Drugs or the Poker?

I know some friends are going out tonight, but I am feeling tired and don´t really feel like doing anything, but then another friend messages me that he is nearby and asks if I don´t want to join him a pub right around the corner. I step down to the pub and meet up with him, the other two guys are sitting in a house in the suburbs drinking. We chat for a while and have a beer, and then move to another pub to wait for our friends.

An hour or so later they arrive and we sit around chatting, before moving to a cocktail bar. Now, one of this group almost always wants to do coke as soon as he gets drunk, and he has been drinking since late afternoon, and I feel the vibes moving from "let´s just take it easy and chill out" to "let´s score some coke and have a blast".

This is making me a bit apprehensive - I have drank three beers and a cocktail, so I am just a little bit tipsy, and I had just made the decision to make the switch to alcohol-free drinks since if there is something that I know with myself it is that I can´t really drink a lot. I don´t want to fall into this trap once again, so I use alcohol extremely rarely and always with large caution. But if they do score coke, it would be fun, really ****ing fun, this gang is great to hang around with and...

...and I realise that there is no ****ing way in hell that I can do coke tonight. It is already almost midnight, my wife is working on Sunday and I have promised to do a lot of kid stuff with the kids during the day. If I come home at 6AM, there is no way I am going to feel good tomorrow unless I sleep until late afternoon, which is not an option. So I do the responsible adult thing and bid farewell to my friends and wish them a good and fun night.

As we were in the city centre, the casino is just a few blocks away - from the bar it is basically a five minute walk to the casino. Incidentally, it is also a five minute walk home (I live just a few blocks from the casino). I can´t resist and check the waiting list and see that there are two seats open at the 2/5 game. It can´t hurt to get a few hours of poker in before heading home, can it? And poker is supposed to be healthier than cocaine, isn´t it?

***

As I am pretty low on financial means for gambling (as I wrote in another one of my posts), I stop by at the ATM and withdraw 550 EUR. I get to the casino and buy in for 350 - normally I hate short buying, but hey, this is NLT and there aren´t really that many deep stacks at the table. And if I lose, I can just go home.

In the first noteworthy hand there is a raise to 15 and a few calls, I make it somehing like 90 to go with AQo from the small blind and get called by the initial raiser. With 200+ in the pot and something like 150 behind, I see no reason to do anything else but to jam on a queen high flop and after a little tanking I get the call. We run it twice, I show my hand, the first board bricks out, the second river is a king, but my opponent says that I´m good and mucks his hand.

I do lose a bit back after raising and getting three-bet and folding, and folding top pair-weak kicker against a quite drunk Norwegian fun player on the river, and then getting caught bluffing, so I add on for another 100. Then this beauty of a hand comes up. It folds to be in late position, the Norwegian Fun Player (NFP) has limped. I make it 25 to go with 94s, since YOLO and THEY ARE SOOOOTED, fun player calls. Flop is K93 with two diamonds (I have none). He checks, I decide to check behind - he will call me wide here and even though I have a range advantage on this board, I feel that with a hand with some showdown value but no real chances of improving I´d rather just keep the pot small. The turn is a black deuce and now NFP leads for 60 into me - a big bet, and I get a live read that he isn´t really too strong.

When I get these live reads, more often than not they are correct. I can´t really explain it, it´s not a single thing or so, but something about his bet sizing, the way he bet, his general demeanour and so on let me think that he really isn´t too strong. I mean, it wasn´t like he was giving off some blatantly obvious super tell or something, but I guess that this is something that comes from 20 years of on-and-off live play.

I ponder raising, I ponder calling, in the end I just call, hoping to see a cheap river. The river is another deuce, so the final board is K9322. Now he leads into me again, this time for 150. A quite big bet, and I think it over for a long time. Is my read really correct? The hands that I am afraid of here are basically 99 and K2. I am pretty sure he doesn´t have a king here that he plays this way, unless it is AK and maybe KQ, but AK would have raised pre and would he really make a big bet for such thin value with just KQ here? I don´t think so.

In the end, I flick in a chip and say "I think you´re bluffing, mate". He flips over 44 and I take it down. Good one.

Now I have a pretty sweet stack. Some time passes without any real action (and NLT is really a foldfest) until I pick up AKo in MP. I open to 25 after a limp or two, the player two to my left three-bets to 100 on the button. It looks like he has a small stack, so I decide to jam, but then I notice that the colours in his 100-stack don´t match up so I ask how much he is playing. He says 700 or so. I must have missed that he added on for 500 - maybe while I was vaping away from the table? Good thing that I asked.

I just call, the flop is A92 rainbow. I check, he bets 75, I call. Turn is another nine, I check and he checks behind. River is some sort of blank, so now it´s time to go for some value. I go for 300, and he thinks for a while before calling. As he didn´t snap me off I am pretty sure I´m going to win this one, until he flips over AKs for the chop. I lose, he loses, house wins. It is 1:30 AM and I decide to go home the next time it is my turn to pay the blinds, I am up something like 3-400 at this point and it will be nice to lock up a win.

A few hands later it is last hand time. I look down at A9o and raise, the same player as in the last hand calls, maybe someone else as well. The flop comes down 732 with two spades (I hold none) and although it isn´t the best board for my range, it isn´t bad either - not a lot of hands that he would call preflop with will connect here, and as we aren´t playing the seven deuce game, I don´t need to fear the mythical 72 combos. I cbet for 25, he calls pretty quickly. Turn is another seven, I fire another bullet, this time for 75, as I feel this is a good card for me - sure, combos like 97/87/76/75 beat me now, but not much else has changed. He thinks for a while before calling.

The river is an offsuit jack, so the flushdraw misses, but I am still sitting with ace high. I decide to fire out a bet of 300, just like I did last time I bet for value against him, and I am expecting to get a fold from most of the hands he has continued with so far. Since he doesn´t snap me off, I am pretty confident of a fold. He asks me how much I have behind, I say 350-400ish, he thinks for a couple of minutes more... and then flicks in the calling chip. God damn it.

I show the bluff, he shows QJ of spades for rivered top pair. Caught me on the river. Now, I actually think his call here is pretty good - he knows that I am a loose player, I have been caught bluffing a few times and the biggest pot I won was with ****ing 94s. Of course, in this spot I will have a lot of overpairs, some trips, and a very small amount of boats, and him having two spades means that it´s very unlikely that I´m bluffing a busted flush draw, but on the other hand, my value range is quite narrow and he also blocks AJ/KJ (and I am not really sure I´d value bet KJ here - AJ I would against this player though, and I would have certainly value bet any overpair). And with him rivering top pair, he now also beats 88-TT in case I have chosen to turn my middling pocket pair into a bluff. Not sure I would do that though - but still, with his specific hand I think a call makes sense, even though I don´t three-barrel bluff that often.

***

I cash out for a tad under 400, just stuck a little bit. The game was quite good and actually quite fun - am I starting to enjoy NLT cashgames again? - but as it is 1:30 AM I choose to rack up and go home as planned. Except for the little ****ing thing that I hate the most about the casinos - I have trouble walking past the pit games without smacking down a bet, and if I somehow make it out of the pit area, I have even more trouble walking past the vast arrays of slots promising a quick dopamine rush.

So I decide to just put a hundred in a slot and then go home. But I lose it quickly, so maybe another hundred? And all of a sudden I am down 300 EUR. Then I finally hit a ****ing bonus, it´s decent but unspectacular, however I get a 175 EUR voucher and tell myself to cut my losses and go home. But I still have a bit of cash on me, so I sit down at another slot and lose most of it. And then I put the ****ing voucher in, and ten minutes later my money is gone.

The problem is that I really like to play the slots - my addictive personality is ideally tailored to the allure of constant dopamine kicks from the machines. Sure, it´s not a big loss, I didn´t degen off my life savings, I lost a total of maybe 400 EUR on the machines - however, it´s just such a ****ing waste.

As I walk home and see a drug related video from my friends in my phone, I wonder to myself - maybe I should have just chosen the drugs instead of the pokerz?

***

I woke up on Sunday morning at around 10 AM, feeling pretty relaxed. I am a bit pissed off at myself for not leaving the casino right after the poker game, but in the end I made the right choice in the game of life by not joining my friends in their drug-fuelled adventures. Sure, it cost me a couple of hundred more than partying through the night, but if I had partied through the night I wouldn´t have been a good father to my children today. And that wouldn´t be fair on them - they shouldn´t have to suffer from a dad who wants nothing but sleep, who is depressed and grumpy due to doing drugs all through the night and not getting enough sleep.

After all, there are much more important things in life than the degenerate lifestyle.

You Want It Darker

Lately I have been thinking about my life on a grander scheme of things. Normally I avoid these thoughts, they usually make me depressed, and the reason I have such thoughts is normally due to the fact that something is off, so I try to avoid, and not give a ****, but there is a limit to how much you can do that.

I have vague memories of one of my first stints with gambling. I was young, just a little kid, maybe eight years old or so, and I was with my parents in London. We were staying somewhere with a pub/restaurant or something on the bottom floor, and my parents were sitting there with friends. Somehow I ended up with one pound at a slot matchine and I won ten pounds. For a small kid in the start of the 1990´s, that was huge money. I think I bought one of those hand held console games with the win. Those of you who are old enough might remember those - they had like one game on them, and a small screen at the top.

I also remember some cruises to Finland. I was a bit older then, and back then absolutely noone checked if kids were playing the slots. I remember playing some, wanting to play more, and of course my parents didn´t give me any money for this. So I devised a genius plan - these were old school machines, well used, and quite often coins would get stuck. But in the drinks on the ship, the cocktail sticks (or whatever you call the thing that you get with the straw, on which they put the orange slices etc) had pointed ends and you could just stick one into the coin slot and get the stuck coin out.

These are my first memories of experiencing the dopamine rush of gambling.

***

I remember my teen years. Of course, we were gambling back then. Different types of poker in the school yard. Semi-illegal slot machines at the local pool hall. Sports betting at the local shops - in Sweden, where I grew up, there was a state gambling monopoly back then, and the betting was done mostly in local kiosks. So you could basically pick up some candy and a coke, and then bet on sports. This was supposed to protect the players from excessive gambling, bla bla bla. But the result was that we, as 15-year old kids, could just go to our local store and place bets on sports games. The same thing was true for horce racing, however there were much fewer shops with horse racing licences and many of them actually did check ID, so we didn´t bet a lot on horses.

I still remember my first really big sports betting score. I had bet a miniscule amount - a couple of bucks or so - on some European football game. I had bet Celta Vigo to beat some team with 3-1 away at high odds. I think it was Arsenal, but I might be wrong. Back then you didn´t have live streaming at your fingertips, so I was following the game through teletext. Pages 377-378 on Swedish teletext are forever engrained into the memories of underage gamblers from the 1990´s, as that was where you got your sports results in the pre-streaming age. Anyway, Celta Vigo scored 3-1 in the second half, and I remember sitting glued to a page of text, just praying for the game to end. And it did end 3-1, I won the equivalent of like a hundred bucks, and I was the ****ing king of betting.

When we got a little bit older, gambling got easier. Although there were a lot of pubs we could go to and drink while underage, most of them didn´t have slots. This was the most dazzling part of the hypocrisy of the Swedish gambling monopoly - state-owned slots were the only legal ones, and they could only be placed in pubs. A year after releasing them, they were the biggest profit-maker for the state gambling company, who still were using arguments like "protecting the problem gamblers" while placing large numbers of addiction-generating slot machines in pubs all across the nation. As a side note, it later turned out that lower-income areas and areas with larger social problems had a disproportionally large amount of pubs with slots, while affluent areas only had a very limited amount of pubs with slots.

But as soon as we hit the legal drinking age, we could gamble safely and legally, at least according to the state. Safely and legally in this instance meant that we could get drunk before gambling, gamble while drunk, and lose the meagre amounts of money we had available to us during the process.

***

All of my life I have had all the hallmarks of an addictive personality. The worst of it all was with alcohol. It spiralled totally out of control when I was in the early mid-twenties. By then I had discovered poker, and back then the games were, of course, just fabulous. When I was sober I would usually win, the problem, however, was that I seldom was sober. And when I drank, even though I went out with no intentions of gambling, I often ended up at the poker club. If I was too drunk, the owners (who I was on good terms with) would often ban me from playing - then I just sat at the bar, chugging down shots until the early morning.

Back then I was young and my body could take the abuse. I could get blazingly drunk, go to bed at 4AM, and still be at work the next day at 9AM and function normally. Especially if I had a beer with lunch to get me back on track. A couple of hours of relative suffering, a beer or two at lunchtime, and come evening I was rearing to go again.

I am not really sure what I was trying to escape back then. My insecurity and low self-esteem? The feeling of the eternal meaninglessness of life? Who knows? I for sure don´t, I just know that I fully embraced the lifestyle of an alcoholic. Of course, there were consequenses, and I did rack up quite a bit of debt. Not that much that I couldn´t pay it all off when I sold my apartment and moved abroad - I still had enough left to go on a six month long bender in my new home country. Oh, and for a lot fo years I actually lived without a credit card - I paid all my bills together with the senior citizens at the local bank office. This was basically the only safety precaution that kept me from gambling away my salary after returning home drunk at 4AM in the morning.

***

In 2009 I met the woman that currently is my wife and that I have two kids with. I had already made a conscious decision to get to terms with my drinking problem beforehand, and my drinking sessions were much more limited both in number and in scale, but I still did get extremely drunk often enough. But it was slowly getting under control, especially after we had kids and I got a driver´s licence. And I started focusing more on work and earning money, and it was paying off. For a while I also lost interest in gambling. I guess I was just content enough with life not to need outside stimulus.

In my naivity I figured that I have it all under control. Yeah, there were a couple of times a year when I went off the rocks and drank too much, and now I was getting older and I couldn´t take it any more. If I had drank myself into oblivion, I would spend the entire next day throwing up and feeling extremely miserable. My body just couldn´t handle the drinking any more.

Then came a summer evening. We were renting a house outside of town back then, I had driven into town to play cards with some friends. As I knew I was going to drink, I had already spoken to my mum and told her that I might spend the night at her apartment if I don´t feel like taking a taxi home. So, we play some cards and drink. Then we play some more, then I start to play some slots, and drink some more. Then I get the brilliant idea to go to the casino and play poker.

At first, I just keep hitting hand after hand, build up my stack, but then I run out of luck. Coincidentally, me running out of luck co-incided with the point when the casino floor cut me off from alcohol. So I keep punting and punting, and at around 7 AM I walk out, stuck a fair bit of money. Now, instead of just hopping into a cab and going home, or walking to my mum´s place, I take out my car keys.

***

It´s a beautiful Saturday morning. The sun is shining, I drive with my windows open. It´s just a 25 minute drive and the streets are empty. I have mixed feelings - at times I feel euphoric, at times I feel paranoid and apprehensive, worried about getting pulled over. At one time I also remember thinking, "Wow, this is easy! I can barely walk, but I have no problems keeping my car straight and driving normally!" As I drive into our driveway, I even manage to park the car without scratching it. I stumble into my bed and fall into a comatose sleep.

When I wake up, the first thing I do is throw up. All of a sudden I am hit by the realisation that I have done something extremely stupid. I rewind the tape. I am at home, that is for sure. Maybe I just imagined the driving part? I take a look outside my window. ****. The car is there. The ****ing car is outside in the yard, neatly parked. And the only way the car could have gotten here is that if I drove it home.

That was the day I swore off alcohol. If I crossed this line once while drunk it means that I probably would do it again. And that was not a risk I was willing to take.

***

Back in the present day, I am thinking about the past year or two of my life. I am back to playing poker on a weekly basis, I am occasionally punting on slots and casino games, I am using drugs on a roughly monthly basis and I have occasionally started to dabble with alcohol again. I am travelling more than ever. Of all these things, the alcohol part is the only thing that actually worries me, but it should also be the easiest part to get rid of, which I will do after my trip to Sweden. But what about the other things?

The punting on slots and casino games has to go. I have also blocked all my bookie accounts, although I had a total deposit limit of something like 50-100 EUR weekly on these, that money rarely has gone to betting sports but mostly to playing online slots when bored. Which is a total ****ing waste. So that part should also be solved, and if I punt when I am at a casino, well, so be it - it´s not the whole world and I don´t get out of control. I´ll just try to avoid playing poker in the casinos, and home games are much more fun anyway. The drugs, well, as long as I don´t do them more often than I do, it´s a non-issue. And the poker, well, I have more winning sessions than losing sessions and I am quite sure I can beat the games I play in, so that´s also a non-issue. My only big losing session was when I was really high on coke and playing excessively aggressively, and then trying to chase my losses, but this has happened once and won´t happen again I gues. Travelling isn´t really an issue and I love travelling, however our personal finances do suffer from our excessive globetrotting. On the other hand, I always feel great when travelling, and travelling per se isn´t connected to degeneracy, so why stop?

So if all my issues are non-issues, then what is the issue?

I guess it´s boredom and a general miscontentness with life. My professional life is extremely boring and has been so for the past few years. At the same time, it´s extremely easy - I mean, the amount of work I do isn´t small, and I have always been able to perform quickly and at a high level when actually getting down to business, so basically I can get away with a lot. And I also have a specific skillset that I have noticed many are lacking. But otherwise my professional life is so mundane and so repetitive that I feel like a ****ing robot. Changing it is hard though - I make a lot of money, I am never overworked and there still are aspects that I really enjoy.

Married life is also quite a drag nowadays. I mean, we still love eachother, we don´t have any major fights any longer since I guess we both have adjusted enough to our respective personalities to not have any reasons for huge fights like we have had in the past, and we are older and more mature, but it is... boring. Partly due to the fact that we get too little alone time without our kids - when we do, we always have fun, but it happens too rarely. Partly due to the fact that we´ve been together for like 14 years or so. Partly due to the fact that because of both of our work commitments and kid´s activities, we don´t have any energy to really communicate. When the kids go to bed, my wife mostly reads a book while I play some stupid computer game until its time to go to bed.

Another reason that makes me more discontent is probably my wife´s reluctantness to accept my poker play. Now, she knows all of my addictive tendencies, and I can´t fault her for being worried, but she really doesn´t want me to play more than once a week. However I feel that I should play at least twice a week, but she doesn´t think that "I gave you like 600 EUR this month, that was money won at the table" is a good argument for me playing more often. The big problem is that I have started to omit things that I do from my life. As for last Friday, I didn´t mention that I spent a couple of hours at the casino, just because I didn´t want to have an argument. And that is never good. I guess I should handle this as a reasonable adult, explain once again that poker is one of the few hobbies that I have, and that I plan on playing more often on nights where I have the possibility to do so without combining poker with drugs, and that if she would like to I can keep a spreadsheet with results that she has access to so she can see the effect and that we can discuss this if I start losing a lot of money, bla bla bla. After all, we are both adults and I don´t really care what she does in her spare time, since neither me nor her are ****ing other people which is basically the only thing I would mind her doing, so why should she care about what I do?

Lately I´ve also been a bit stressed about finances, as I am having much less spare cash than I am used to, which just adds to the general feeling of depression. Should be temporary and in the summer I should be back to normal with regards to this, but still. It ****ing sucks. Doesn´t help that I am totally irresponsible with bills, I forget to pay them on time, so now I suddenly got a gas and electricity bill for two months instead of one, and this happens almost every ****ing month.

***

While writing this post, I at least am starting to put things into place. Writing always helps we when it comes to putting things into perspective. I guess I am feeling trapped by life at the moment, and have been feeling so for quite a while, so I am looking for outlets that gets rid of the boredom. I go to the swimming pool 3-4 times a week, spring is finally here so I have switched from car to bike as my main means of transportation, so I am getting enough excercise, but that doesn't really help. Going out more with friends doesn't either - I have fun for an evening, but wake up feeling like **** the next day, even if I have been completely sober. I guess the main problem is that I spend eight hours a day glued to a computer, doing mostly boring and menial tasks, however isn't that what life is like for most people?

To be honest, I don't think playing more poker would help either, and that is probably the main problem: I have no idea how to get out of this hole of constantly feeling discontent, although objectively speaking everything is fine.

So, the TL;DR version of this post is that I guess I am probably in some sort of mid-life crisis. **** if I know.

P.S. I just want to add that I in no way blame my parents for my issues with gambling etc. Most kids that I knew back then did occasionally have the chance to play some slots, and most of them didn´t end up with any gambling problems whatsoever. I am probably just wired that way and I am sure I would have found that sweet thrill sooner or later anyway.

But on a lighter note, I'll probably try to make it 3/3 ITM in tournaments this year. If my wife doesn't get stuck at work, I'll make it just in time for the end of latereg in today's 50 EUR rebuy tournament (the one I split three-ways last week).

Let's hope for some rungood. Actually feel much better after posting my previous post.

No rungood. Lasted one orbit. EP raises 400, I three-bet too small to 1000, big stack four-bets all-in, I am not in the business of folding queens 45BB deep, up against AK and a king in the window.

Oh, well. Will watch the footy here for a while and see if the cash game gets going soon - brought only one 200 EUR bullet and don’t plan on staying late, but don’t want to go home yet either.

And writing sometimes does wonders for your mental health - since writing that last post I am just feeling so much better. And more content.

Fish I Am

I have just lost the 200 EUR buyin I had brought. In a double board bomb pot I got it in on the flop with a very good draw on one board and a decent draw on the second board, but I bricked out against a player with two decent made hands. As in the tournament, my money lasted for about an orbit. Just a standard PLO spot, nothing wrong with the play here.

So, time to go home. But I just got here and don´t feel done playing. I ask the host for the nearest ATM, he tellls me where it is, but also says that he can let me play on credit if I want to, and that we can settle later. So I rebuy for another 200 as the game seemed pretty good, but with my Sweden trip coming up I did not want to buy in deep - I am still much lower on cash than I would like to be and taking a large L now was not in my plans for the night.

***

There is a guy drinking and having fun, potting almost every hand pre, and often continuing his aggression postflop. This makes the game fun, but also makes the swings bigger. And, what is even more unfortunate, is that this guy has a fold button as well. After having bet the turn and river, he tank-folds the second nut straight when I raise his river bet - and I, of course, had the nuts in this particular instance.

However, my stack is growing, and I am actually starting to feel okay about my play. But I was not looking at things objectively - all the signs of bad play were there. I was playing too many hands pre and playing my hands way too passively, and as a result, my stack was yo-yoing. I also missed a spot for a thin value bet against the player described above - as soon as I checked it back, I realised my mistake, but by then it was too late.

Instead of racking up and going home a slight winner, I keep playing. And I make some hands, win some money, when I make a totally ******ed play in PLO5.

Again, it is a double board bomb pot. The first board is KJ5, the second board 863. On the first board I have second pair and some backdoors, on the first board I have top set. Mr Aggro pots it (70) from early position and gets two callers and it is on me. I am playing a stack slightly shy of 600 EUR. In this spot, I have two options - one is to call and evaluate, the second is to pot it to push whatever equity I have in this spot. At this moment, Mr Aggro was quite drunk, and willing to stack off very light - normally, I think this is a call, although we will be forced to fold a lot of turns, but in this spot I think there is some merit to pushing (which would basically commit me to an all-in) hoping to get it either heads up against Mr Aggro or to just fold everyone out and take down a sizeable pot. Or get it in vs some random draws and ****.

That was what I was thinking at the table - in retrospect, I think that it is actually closer to a fold than a call or raise with deep stacks, since I have very low equity on the first board and since a lot of hands will have good equity against me on the second board. Getting a lot of money in with just a set and no real redraws is a good way of lighting money on fire. A call isn´t bad either though, however, you will fold A LOT of turns.

So, on the turn, the first board is a blank, killing my backdoors, and the second board is another king. Mr Aggro checks, the next player jams for 350ish, fold, and here I decide to re-jam since I hold a king in my hand, meaning that my top set is good. Now, the player behind me goes into the tank for a long time, he covers me, and finally calls, the rest of the table folds. I re-check my hand... and notice that I have a ****ing jack, not a king. So now I am basically sure that I am drawing dead for the main pot, all I can hope for is to at least not lose all of my stack on this donk move. On the river, I make a boat on the board where I had a set, the player who pushed unsurprisingly shows KK to scoop a 1,5k pot and the player to my left mucks to my surprise, so at least I scoop the side pot to cut my losses.

Now, making a mistake like this in a huge spot should have been the last sign I needed that I just need to get up and go home. I put in 600 EUR on a turn with two draw heavy boards and only second set to show for it - it is a horrendous play. But instead I press on.

***

I am playing worse and worse, going into passive tilt mode. But still I refuse to quit. My stack continues to go like a yo-yo, and when it gets down to 170 EUR I decide to just **** it and gamble with a trash hand (J9532) when I have the chance to get it in three ways. Flop is T94 with two clubs, it goes check-check. Turn is nice, an offsuit six, so now I actually have a good chance of winning this pot. Mr Aggro bets, other player calls. River is another nine, giving me trips, and as the river goes check-check I am pretty sure that I will win this hand - and I do.

So, having been rewarded for my bad play, I rack up and leave a very slight winner...

...the hell I do, I continue being on passive tilt, calling bets pre, calling flop bets with decent hands, and folding bad turns. Soon I find myself down to 200 again, and in one of the few NLT hands I raise KJ, Mr Aggro three-bets me, I call, flop is J high, I jam, he snap-calls so I think that I am beat, but then turn and river blanks out, I say that I have a jack, he says it´s good. So I get another chance to rack up and go home break even in this game.

And I of course blow it. I lose against a short stack who jams 100 pre over my raise, I have T98 suited so I call it off, he had A88, I made a gutshot on the river but unfortunately that card also boated him up. Then I lose some more hands playing passive-tilty, until I pot KK992ds in PLO5, Mr Aggro repots, and I get it in. Flop is bad, JTx with two diamonds (I hold none), turn is a blank, river is a T, and I lose to AKKTxss.

***

I guess there is some justice in this world after all - after getting at least three chances to rack up a slight winner or break even, I punt it all away. I really can´t fathom how I after all these years still so often ignore the fact that I am playing absolutely horrendous poker when I am at the table. I think that I might start a new routine - always take a five minute break after losing a big pot (unless it is a suckout or a standard spot like getting it in with a monster draw and bricking out) and evaluate my play and evaluate if I am able to play normal poker going forward, and if not, then just rack up and go home.

Beer, Weed and Poker in Stockholm

The game is wild with a lot of action, although I have to say that I have had a part in driving this action as well. The blinds are 10/10 SEK, which is roughly 1/1 in USD, although there is yet to have been a hand that wasn´t straddled at least once, and I am sitting on a stack of roughly 12 000 after making some hands. I don´t recall the preflop action, but as usual someone potted and a short stack three-bet it.

The flop comes down QJ4 raindow, which is a pretty decent board for my particular hand - I have QJ and some other cards as well. The shortstack now jams for around 500, and a bigger stack next to him calls the jam. Now I pot it, which is something like 3000ish to push the equity I think I have over the second villain. Yeah, I mean, in most PLO games you maybe wouldn´t feel too comfortable putting in something like 300 BB (or 150/75 depending on the straddles) with just top two and some backdoor redraws, but in this spot I felt that I am very likely to have the best hand - no need to let villain see a cheap turn with a straight draw or something. He thinks for a while and calls. My plan is to jam almost all turns that don´t complete the straight.

So, with around 8000 in the pot (side pot something like 5500) we go to the turn, which is a beautiful three, not only completing the rainbow, but also giving me a backdoor gutshot. What a time to be alive. The villian checks, as I had expected, and I jam, and he now goes into the tank - he is playing deep as well, with a tad under 7000 behind going into the turn. Now, I know I am ahead, but I don´t know by how much, and I am not really sure if I prefer a call or a fold, but on the other hand it doesn´t really matter. I look at the board as my opponent thinks his options through before announcing call.

We run it once, there is around 22 000 SEK in the middle which makes is the biggest pot of the night.

***

The morning started off early with my alarm set for 05:15. I take a quick shower, get dressed and at 05:40 I get a taxi to the airport. Arrive at around six, an little more than an hour before departure time, and see that there is quite a line for the security check. The screens say 12 minutes wait tiem, so I assume it´s more like 15-20, but I´m tired and I hate standing in lines so I just straight up gangster it and buy the fast track option for 10 EUR.

A few minutes later I am through security, heading to the first café to pick up a much needed coffee. The journey is, as expected, uneventful, although I was a bit surprised to see a 7 AM Saturday morning flight from Riga to Stockholm being something like two thirds full. I take the bus into town instead of the train so I can take a nap and I arrive in the city centre at 8:30 only to find that most places are closed (expected) and those that are not only serving grossly overprised sandwiches. I walk around for an hour, looking for something that isn't a sandwich priced at like 60-70+ SEK that I can make at home in a couple of minutes, but have no luck and end up eating a baguette at Upper Crust for 89 SEK (and another 43 for a latte).

After this breakfast robbery I make my way to my hotel, I had emailed a day in advance and asked for early checkin, but unfortunately they don't have any rooms available (also expected), so I go to the bathroom, freshen up and then drop off my bag at the hotel and tell the teller that I'll probably be back late at night. Turns out I had pre-paid the room which was a nice surprise, had totally forgotten about it.

After this, I take the subway to the part of town where we grew up, which is where we plan to meet up before the game. I sit outside in the sun (was 20-21 degrees centigrade yesterday), enjoy life and kill time on my phone.

***

"As you didn't show up before the game, you have to bring coke for all of us as a punishment!", I jokingly write in our group chat. One of two friends couldn't make it to our pre-game meetup since he had to take his daughter to a birthday party, so it was just two of us sitting in the beautiful sun, drinking a couple of beers and talking. Oh, yeah, this was the view from where we were sitting:


It doesn't take long for my friend to reply.

"I won't take coke, but I'll take the second best thing: my weed vape."

***

We somehow manage to get on the same bus to the stadium as my friend was planning to take, so we meet up already on the way to the game. As we walk past a pub near the stadium, we spot another three guys we went to school with, so we head to the pub and chat with them before going inside. We get in, pick up some beers and then head to the stands. Ah, the atmosphere! Not going to the games of my favourite football club more than a few times per year is what I miss the most about Sweden.

Anyway, the game starts, and soon after kick-off my friend pulls out his vape pen and we pass it around for a while. Now, the last time I smoked weed from a vape pen, it was very, very mellow and chill. I was kind of expecting the same this time, but boy, was I wrong about that! This weed was some strong ****.

It doesn't take too long for me to realise that I am actually quite high. The pen gets passed around another time after we score our first goal, and all is good. But as the half drags on, I realise that the effects are much, much more than I had expexted. I find myself zoning out, at times I have a hard time singing along to the chants - I suddenly stop, then pick up again. And I realize that I am experiencing major time dilation - time seems to be moving at a crawl.

I wouldn't say the effects were unpleasant, but I would have much preferred to be at this level when I am chilling somewhere, instead of at a football game. Shortly before half time I also get this weird feeling that my field of vision (or is it my body?) flickers to the right a bit, like I look at one spot, and then it just flips a few notches to the right. When my friend passes the pen for a third time, I notice that he only takes one toke of the pen, so I do the same - although I don't want the high to end and go away, I don't want to smoke myself to a level where I basically am incapable of following the match.

The effects continue for the entire second half. Man, was I high.

***

After the game ends, there is some malfunction in the subway system, the trains aren't coming and the platform just keeps filling up, so we decide to head to the bus instead. No chance there either - judging by the waiting crowds, we would make the third bus to come at best, and as the weather is just lovely we decide to walk back over the bridge - as did a lot of other fans. As we walk across, we occasionally chat, occasionally just zone out. We discuss which bar to go to and in the end opt for a bar we used to hang out at when we were young - it's still going strong, with the same owner, and that is something that is nice to see and that we want to support. Otherwise our area, that used to be working-class/lower middle-class is now like the hipster epicentre of Stockholm, a lot of gentrification and pretentious bars having pushed out our old-time hangouts.

Waiting for the bus on the other side of the bridge seems to take forever, but that only means one thing - I am still very much high. On the way to the bar we realise that we need to eat something, so we grab a pizza before we go on to the bar. It is first at the bar, midway through our first beer, that the weed starts to mellow out and we slowly start returning to baseline. Man, what a ride it was. So unexpected. Good thing I am not a rookie when it comes to drugs - it actually was a situation where I can imagine that one might start freaking out otherwise.

The high did wonders for our blood alcohol levels - they weren't high when we got to the game, but after a 3+ hour break from drinking we are more or less sober (the beer at the arena only has 3,5% alcohol, and we didn't go for any more beers in half-time which we otherwise always do, since we were just too wasted to think about getting up and getting more drinks). Now, although my Sweden visits are basically the only time I allow myself to drink quite a lot, I still want to keep control and not get too much out of line. Been there, done that, don't want to go there again.

***

The river is an ace. One of the worst cards in the deck, and my opponent announces "nuts" and flips over KT (he had AKT for the wrap). The shortstack also had KT, so they chop the main pot and all my money is gone, and I am now stuck again since I was in for 7500 SEK in the game. Punted something like 2000 in an NLT game while waiting for PLO to start and lost a buy-in pretty early on in PLO when my draw didn't get there or something.

Soon after, the game is about to break, as the guy who won the large pot quits and then another player leaves. Only me and one more player left, and he asks if I want to play heads-up 300 SEK ante double board bomb pots. Hey, I'm not one who is going to back down from something that fun, and since I arrived at the poker club at around 11 PM when my friends went home I have been pumping coffee and water, so there is no reason to hurry up and go home. Time go get unstuck.

We battle for a while as I try to get his betting tendencies sorted out, but then I punt a stack where he bets river and I have great blockers on both boards, so I jam, he calls and I am about to go home, when I realise I still have 2500 SEK left in cash and ask if he wants to keep playing. He does, feeling confident that out-of-town-fishy will go broke soon, but this out-of-town-fishy had other plans.

After a series of small pots (that do cost massive rake) I finally win a big one. And then I hero call on the river and chop. And then I win a few pots uncontested. And then I scoop on the river where it turns out that my pocket pair of nines is good enough on one of the boards, as we were both playing the other board where I had the nuts. And all of a sudden my stack is big, his stack is small, and I can feel his play and confidence deteriorating with every deal.

The club owner tells us that we can play a maximum of ten hands more, since they are going to close. Oh, and by now we were playing 500 SEK ante instead - as soon as my opponent started losing, he asked to up the antes and I obliged. I am not far from unstuck, my opponent has a quickly dwindling stack, and I want to finish him off so I can get unstock. Of course, had it not been for the massive rake (5%, don't remember the cap, I think it might have been 50 SEK but I am not sure, however each hand we put 1000 in antes so rake was a big factor) I think I would have been unstuck already, but hey... can't get it all, right?

And I finally get my chance. One board is jack high, the other board is 98x, and I hold QJJTx - I hit two absolute dream board, with top set on one and overpair+wrap on the other board. And he bets into me. I jam, he calls, I make a straight, my set holds, good times!

I stack my chips and count - 10670 SEK. 70 goes to the dealer as a tip, but I actually ****ing did it - from being in for 10 000 SEK, down to my last 2500 buy-in, to a small win of 600 SEK after an hour or so of heads up bomb pots. I feel elated as I leave the club and call a cab to get back to the hotel.

***

Today I woke up at 8 AM, feeling surprisingly refreshed although I had slept less than four hours, as I got back to the hotel at 4 AM. Surprisingly I didn't even have a hangover, although I did feel a bit worn out.

So, I basically had a great time with my childhood friends and I managed to win money in the end. However, I am still a bit tilted that I didn't manage to hold in that large 22 000 SEK pot - if I win that one, I have a stack of something like 25 000 SEK after being in for 7 500 SEK and I am sure the game would have broken soon, and I would probably have racked up a massive profit (and probably pass on the heads up bomb pots). I made the correct analysis of the situation, went with my read, was right and still lost. Poker, I guess.

Oh well, this trip report gets filed in the category "Great Success" anyway.

Hope you all have a nice next week!

Meh. Break Time?

It´s a bomb pot, and I look down at quite a premium hand - double suited aces. Of course, the flops are 622 and 875, which leaves me with nothing but an overpair and some backdoor flushdraws. SB pots it, the next player raises, drunk aggro guy who is raising everything all the time jams for 500ish (same guy is in a few posts back) and it folds to me with 500 in my stack. I, of course, muck my hand without thinking twice. Now, the player next to me pots it and the next player counts out his chips - he has something like 900 behind, and he calls as well.

The first board runs out 622 2 K. The second board runs pairs on the river, otherwise nothing changes. Now, Mr. Aggro happily shows a deuce - he turned quads - and nothing on the other board. The guy who jammed turns over KKxxx for nut boat and an overpair. And the last player is absolutely fuming - he had 66 for the boat and got drawn out in brutal fashion twice in two cards. And he can´t beat KK on the other board.

What the ****? First of all, the massive jam with naked ****ing kings. Second of all, noone really had anything on the 875 board. How is that even possible? And I folded ****ing aces - I would have scored a double up to be in the green for the night if I had just made a stupid donk move in a spot where I should be drawing more or less dead.

***

The tournament was quite short for me. Mr Aggro had a massive chip stack when I arrived and it only got bigger and bigger. After the rebuy period, he was raising basically every single hand, and that was also to be my demise. He made it something like 900, SB called, and I looked down at ATo in the BB. I am crushing Mr Aggro´s range, I have 8k left and I am happy to take it down preflop and build my stack, or get it in against whatever random hand Mr Aggro is raising. But Mr Aggro folds and the player next to me calls, so now I know I am ****ed - and sure enough, he flips over AQ to bust me.

The first hand of cashgame poker I did manage to double up. I had QTTxx with QT of spades, flop was T32 with two diamonds and a spade, I was first to act so I lead out into the field for nearly pot (70 or so), and got only one call from the player next to me. Turn was the five of spades, and although A4/64 combos got there, I am not going to slow down with top set and a flushdraw, so I jam and get called by the player next to me (same guy who later did the 2k jam in the first hand described in this post). River is a spade, I flip over my hand and my opponent is raging about being so unlucky, having turned a set of fives to go with his nut diamond flushdraw. Yeah, really unlucky, man, not like I had you beat the whole way.

Unfortunately, that is where the fun ended for me. I lose a few marginal multi-way preflop all-ins which I probably could have avoided, but hey, at a good price and with decent hands I more often than not choose to just get it in there. But pretty soon I have not only lost my profit but also my initial buy-in, and I am not playing particularly well, so I head out for a walk to clear my head and then decide to buy in for another 500.

***

After Mr Aggro sat down, I began losing fast, as the pots grew bigger and I couldn´t hit a single flop. And when I had something decent, I had to fold the turn. And then I limp AQTTx suited to the ace, and Mr Aggro on the straddle of course pots it, so now I re-pot to isolate and get it HU against him (and I intend to call off any jam), but the player next to me (again, same guy as in the first and second pots above) re-pots it, Mr Aggro goes all-in, and now I have no choice but to fold, despite having put in something like 120 preflop. Mr Aggro actually had decent aces this time, but they were no match for the other player who held AKK and made a boat.

I do feel that I am playing **** and once again I am making the wrong adjustments to the play of Mr Aggro. First of all, even though I tighten my range pre, it still isn´t tight enough. Second of all, I play too passively - aggression needs to be met with counter-aggression in marginal spots, which is something that I don´t do. And yeah, it all ends when Mr Aggro pots it on T92 with two diamonds, I hold J8766 with no diamonds and jam my last 300, turn is a blank, river brings in the flush and pairs the nine, and his pair of tens is good. He had naked T2 on the flop, but of course I brick out and go home.

***

I played horrendously bad poker, I lost quite a bit of money, and I just feel dejected, like a total newbie ****ing fish who got schooled. Again. And I have a shitload of bills to pay within a week, and no poker money left that is separated from my main funds after yesterday´s loss, and our washing machine broke down and my wife wants to get some extremely expensive ****ing washer with built-in dryer type of thing for 1500 EUR, and I say that´s too much, but still, I don´t know when I´ll be able to take a thousand from my budget just to go gamble.

And since I´m playing **** anyway, I might take a prolonged (at least 2-4 weeks) break from poker. That might change on a whim, though... But yeah, right now it feels that poker is off the table.

When Variance Hits

As I am walking to the nearest self-service laundry (our washing machine is still broken, and we still haven´t got a new one, I offered to pick one up, but my wife says that she wants to buy it, and I said sure, whenever, I don´t mind going to the self-service laundry for a while, just don´t buy the ****ing 1400 EUR machine since that´s a ****ing absurd price to pay), and I am walking on dopamine clouds.

I have just managed to win 2000 EUR in a couple of hours, in a couple of hours more I will be heading out to a poker game, and life is just abso****inglutely marvelous.

***

As I arrive to the game, I can instantly see it´s a bad one. The lineup is basically regs only, and a bunch of pretty good ones too. No massively drunk gamblers who will pot every hand with random trash, no punters who will call you down with bottom set on a three-to-a-flush, three-to-a-straight board in PLO when you hold the nuts. I mean, it´s going to be fun anyway, but it´s not really the lineup I had hoped for - with me being basically the only loose, gambly fish at the table.

So I guess I'll need to have luck on my side. As in hitting one-outers in a double board PLO5 bomb pot where one flop is QTx, the other whatever, and I have middle set on one board and a double gutter and backdoor flush draw on the other. There is an all-in for 50, then an all-in for 65, so getting these pot odds I call, and then another guy goes all-in for like 100 total after me and off we go to the races. The river pairs the top board, and the player next to me says "that's mine". I say, "sorry, mate, not this time", as I table my quads to send his top set to the trash. Nice one, although I don't think I can fold with short stacks and good pot odds. After all, I had a double gutter as a backup on the other board...

A while later, I make what I think was the worst play of the entire night, at least from my side. The flop comes J44. I have, 43s. I lead into the field and get a bunch of callers. Turn is a blank, I think a deuce, and I check. Now a quite tight player to my left bets, and it folds to me, so I call. River is another blank - a 7 or 8 or something - and I check again. Now he jams for something like 170 into 120, and I tank for ages, commenting on how I beat basically nothing, but finally I don´t manage to find the fold only to get shown an obvious J4. It was a clear fold IMHO, as this player won´t end up with many (if any) bluffs in this spot and I doubt he would value-jam worse than 4x here - and I lose to all 4x hands.

I keep playing, my stack goes up and down, but the swings are quite small. I manage to get back at my nemesis from the hand above in PLO5, when I pot some sort of aces, he re-pots out of the straddle, and I jam for a tad under 200. He says "well, since it´s you, I guess I have to call", and I win both runouts. There weren´t any really interesting hands to report on - most were more or less standard, I did find a few good spots for bluff-raising turns in two/three-card games and got the bluffs through, got value once when I turned the nuts and check-called turn, check-raised river in PLO5, got a naked ace three-street bluff through in PLO5 (bet smallish on the flop, bet big on turn when flush came in and jammed river), lucked out in NLT (I had 98, flop 876 w/ two diamonds, a player bets, I raise, he calls, turn is the nine of spades bringing in a flush draw, he donk-jams for 2/3 pot, and I can´t find the fold with two pair since I can´t see that he will have many Tx hands here, he has A5 of spades for a made straight and flush re-draw, we run it twice and I boat up on the first runout) and also won two runouts with a wrap+pair vs overpair in PLO5. Considering the game was full of decent players, I was happy to cash out for 440 EUR (in for 400 total) when I left at 3:30 AM.

***

I had deposited 25 EUR to place a sports bet on Swedish football, but after placing my bet I still had 10 EUR left, so I figured I´ll mess around with slots a bit. I hit some bonus game and win some money, then I go to the slots where you can buy bonus game. And I hit a good one. And then another one. Now I have something like 150 in my account, so I say **** it, let´s go full ******, and play slots where you can buy a Super Bonus game (like an enhanced bonus game that costs 100 EUR on 0,2 EUR bet level) and of course, I hit again. So I play one more. And get another good one. I mean, good one to the tune of:


And all of a sudden I have 1100 EUR in my account. I cash out 800 and continue to play slots, and instead of losing my money, I win more. So I cash out again. Rinse and repeat a few times and I have 2000 EUR in cashouts heading for my bank account before I finally lose the remaining couple of hundred EUR I left after each cashout.

So, when I went to the laundry place, I was on a major dopmanine high from crushing the slots. This was just what I needed - a replenished bankroll which should ensure that I´ll be able to play poker whenever I feel like it for the rest of the month without dipping into non-gambling funds.

Sometimes variance hits you in a good way.

It looks like you won a washing machine in slots

yea, sounds like a good time for an 'expensive washing machine'.. why are you pocketing 2k and then doing laundry in a mat like a peasant?!?

share teh wealth with your wife, lord knows she puts up with enough

I always share the wealth. that, combined with the fact that I'm a gambly fish, is the reason why my bankroll never remains intact. The first thing I do after coming home from a winning poker session is usually to place a couple of hundred EUR in my wife´s purse, just because it feels nice. She never asks for this money, but I like to share.

Anyway, my wife's friend suggested that she should go to some sort of appliance outlet type of store and talk to the staff there - she also felt that 1,5k is a way overpriced machine (I think that was the price that was listed in the store closest to us, which is in the city centre). As my wife said no to me picking up a new machine, I'm stuck with the laundromat until she does so - hopefully she'll do it this week, but she's been working a whole lot lately including a lot of night shifts, so she's had no time to do it. And seriously, 1500 EUR is like 4-5x the price of a regular washing machine, I just can't see that there aren't any similar options at lower prices available, although I know jack **** about washing machines. I mean, if my wife will insist, I'll cash the ****er, but I still hope that she'll find something that seems more reasonable... I quickly googled, and found a lot of machines for something like 700-900 EUR with built in driers, which is like 2x the price of a normal one and IMHO sounds more legit - although, as said, I know jack **** about waching machines....

Can't agree that wifey needs to put up with a lot though - I'm actually a pretty decent husband and father, I spend a lot of time with our kids, I do my part of the house work, I never say no if my wife wants to take a few days off to go relax somewhere alone, I provide for the family and finance all of our vacations abroad and my vices are basically down to an evening of poker a week and some very occasional drug use that almost never affects me the next day. Of course, this isn't (usually) a blog about my mundane everyday life, but about the part of my life that falls within the vice category - so I guess that might make me seem more of a degen in everyday life than I am in reality.

As a small token of appreciation for your excellent efforts here allow me to share my recent washing machine buying experience:

- consensus seems to be avoid combination washer/driers entirely if possible, and if necessary spend as much as you can on them, and even then it won't do as good a job and is far more likely to have issues than separate units.

- we went for a samsung series 5 ecobubble 9kg (also comes in 8 and 12kg) in the end and it's great, would highly recommend, 550ish here in Ireland, only downside is the matching samsung dryer is crazy expensive compared to other brands :-o

hope that's of some help and gl!

Thanks a lot for the kind words and the tips on the washers. I don´t mind spending money if I see a reason for it, and it felt like 1500 EUR is just absurdly expensive, but maybe it isn´t after all...

Our problem is that we don´t really have space for a separate unit without completely remodelling our home (or like having a dryer standing in the corner of one of the kid´s rooms), so it´s either a combined machine or just a washer. We´ll see what my wife decides on after visiting that outlet, I´ll leave it to her.

When Variance Hits, Part 2

A week ago, I cashed out 2000 EUR from a 25 EUR slot deposit. This week, I decide to go for a repeat. No messing about with sports betting this time, my full 25 EUR bankroll on the line instantly. I tell myself not to be greedy - a 1000 EUR cashout this week will be perfectly fine. No need to ask for too much, right?

I check out the list of games and play a game called Monkey Pop. I click on Buy Bonus and pay 20 EUR for the bonus game. Now, this game works in a way that before you start the bonus, you get randomly assigned the number of free spins, the multiplier increase with each win and how many ways you start with (you can unluck all reels for more win ways). I draw six free spins, 3x multiplier increase and a 486 way grid - the lowest possible. A very poor draw, but hey, all is not lost yet.

Fast forward 30 seconds later. My bonus game pays 2,50 EUR. What is happening? How can this be? Can I actually lose money at the slot machines? What is up with their programming? I thought they were supposed to be a stable source of income! Needless to say, I lose the remaining 7,50 EUR quickly.

However, all is not lost - I am set to play poker later in the evening.

***

From the start, the game isn't particularly good. Yesterday I asked one of the co-hosts if the game will be better than last week, he said "so far six gamblers, no grinders confirmed". Well, that turned out to not materialise. Anyway, as I'm there, I play and I get a pretty sweet bluff through. This is against M, who likes to play back at me and make plays. He usually is a good hand reader, so he is fun to play against. Anyway, the flop is 533, checks through, turn 5, and here I think that I bet out in LP and got one or two callers (I held 5x). The river is an ace and now M leads for 11 into 25ish, folds back to me and I consider my options. I am pretty sure that this is no bluff, and value that beats me is a straight and a better 5x. However, what is the value hands that he can call a raise with? Not a lot now, is there? So I for once follow through and pot it, and sure enough, he flashes 42 for the straight before mucking his hand. Always feels good when you turn a hand with decent showdown value into a bluff and get it through.

Later on I had another fun spot, where I bet the turn with air and some blockers on a paired board, he called. The river bricked out and I potted again, he folded, and afterwards I heard him explaining to his friend (to whom he had shown his hand) that "I thought that he was bluffing, but I don't think he would follow through on the river if he had a bluff, so that's why I folded". I say that he sure sounds confident about his read, he says something along the lines of "yeah, I usually get my reads right", I just smile, but don't show my airball. One of the main reasons for following through was exactly this - in previous games I had given up on firing another barrel in spots like these. And a while later another fun spot comes up, I had opened aces pre, flop was AK7 with three hearts (I hold none). M had shown his hand to his friend and now he checks, I bet around half-pot, he check-raises and I tank-call. Turn is a brick, and now for the second time his friend picks up his cards and starts looking at them. Of course, I am looking at his friend this whole time. M thinks for a while and then checks. I check it back. River pairs the board, he checks, I bet, he folds, and now he tells his friend "look, next time, please don't pick up my cards and look at them like that, ReGen was looking at you the whole time and it was quite obvious that you were trying to find a combination that interacted with the board". M was absolutely right - after his check-raise I was apprehensive and not really sure whether to fold or call a big turn bet, but the way he was looking at the cards was just such a strong live read that there was no way in hell I was folding any runouts.

But that was basically it when it came to the fun hands. The rest was just pure misery.

***

I was all-in in four double board bomb pots and lost three, chopped one. One was just a shitty spot with decent two-board equity, but couldn't get it heads up so we went four-ways, and four-ways my equity was lower than I had hoped for (and I didn't hit). One was pretty standard where I didn't hit. One was pretty tilty, but since that one went four-ways it was fine (I had NFD+OESD on one board, pair+gutshot+backdoors on the other) - of course, I lost it all. After a while more players joined and the game was much better, but then I managed to punt off a buy-in against a splashy drunk guy where I made a loose call preflop of his re-raise and jammed for almost precisely pot on an A-high board with two spades after he checked. He tanked and said, **** it, I call, with QQ and a flushdraw, and I was basically drawing to something like 6 outs and didn't hit. On one board, he made a flush, on one board, queens were good. Good times.

And then came another hand against the same guy, where I raised, he re-raised, I came over the top again with AKQT9ss, he jammed, I happily called, we ran it three times and I was in good shape against J5443 with three diamonds. First board runs out X765x, second boards runt out XXJJJ, third board runs out 87xx6 and he ****ing scoops me. I did another final 250 EUR rebuy, managed to lose a chunk in three-card NLT where a player raised, M three-bet, I four-bet to 80 with AKQ (AQs), he called, flop was J high with two diamonds, he checked, I checked, turn blank, he jams, I fold. He showed KQJ with two diamonds. What's interesting here is that another guy folded KK2 to my re-raise - not sure why, since he wasn't sitting particularly deep. The last nail in my coffin was yet again in three-card NLT, where I three-bet to 20 with AQQ, got two callers, flop J86 with two spades, checks to me and I jam my last 80, M calls, I ask him if he has a set, he says yes, and his 66 hold.

Lost around 800 on the night, didn't play my best (two of the gamble spots in double board bomt pots I probably would have been able to get away from if I was playing my best) and ran like ****. Slept four hours and right now I feel that I won't play poker again for a long time. However, knowing me I think that "a long time" will be something like two weeks maximum. Next week is out of the question anyway due to family commitments, so yeah, I guess I'll hit the felt again sometime in the end of May if I feel like it. And hopefully finally have a nice little sunrunning session, where I actually make some big hands when it matters.

If I´m High On Coke, I Can Play NLT

It´s a Friday night and I am in a great mood - I just dropped of my rental van after a nice day out with my employees. Most of them took me up on the offer to go out for dinner and drinks afterwards, so while they are on their way to find a bar, I am on my way to the gas station to do some coke before heading to the bar. As I walk out, I want to grab a cab, but a 10 minute wait and 10 EUR price tag makes me choose public transport instead (which I almost never use). I hop on the first bus that comes and I feel the cocaine starting to do it´s magic. A pleasent buzz envelops me, but then I notice that the next stops look off - as if this bus isn´t going through the city centre.

I ask a passenger if this bus is going to turn off on the next street, and she says yes. How ****ing tilting - for once I had a bus with no homeless people (I seem to always hit the jackpot when it comes to extremely smelly homeless people the few times a year I use public transportation), but now it seems that I have taken the single ****ing bus that doesn´t go through the centre, but goes around it. I hop off and start walking towards the bar. It´s only around a 20 minute walk, the sun is shining, my already good mood has been cocaine-upgraded to just ****ing excellent and I almost feel like I am hopping on small clouds of euphoria as I make my way to the bar.

***

We spend the evening drinking (although I stick to alcohol-free beer) and chatting and eating, and I of course do bumps of coke whenever I go to the toilet, and we all have a ****ing wonderful time - a day and evening like this does wonders for morale in general, and a new employee who will start in a couple of weeks who I also had invited seemed to enjoy herself a lot. And fit in very well with the rest of us. As the evening starts to wind down a friend of mine texts me that he´ll meet me up, so I suggest we meet at the casino sportsbar so we can do some gambling as well, and he´s up for it.

I arrive at the casino and order two beers, I decide that I´ll have a couple of pints of real beer to boost and extend my cocaine high a bit. Anyway, my friend joins me, we sit in the bar and watch some random French Open tennis games (and play some miniscule bets that lose) and chat, and, of course, occasionally pass my bag of cocaine between us as we do bathroom breaks.

A few hours pass and I say that I want to play some slots.

***

My friend has gone to the bathroom to do a bump and I check my wallet - I have 50 EUR left. Slots went decent, break even, but then I hit one of the coldest runs of Black Jack ever. I mean, it was ****ing sick, I double on 10 and get 20, dealer is showing a six, and draws ten-five for 21. And all the ****ing time. At least my friend ran decent, and his 50 EUR buyin had grown to something like 150. As I wait for my friend I decide to put the last 50 into a slot, and if I lose, hell, I'll just sit with my friend and cheer him on (and hope that my bad luck at Black Jack isn't contagious).

But I hit a bonus game and as my friend comes back from his bathroom break, I have just printed a 200 EUR voucher as we make our way back to the Black Jack tables. And for once my luck actually turns around, and I start winning money instead. I do some more coke and then give the bag to my friend and tell him that he can have the rest, since I'm done - it's now like half past midnight, I feel the effects winding down and I have been doing coke for something like 7-8 hours now, so there's really no point in doing more (especially since we were about to run out after a few more toilet breaks) since I know I need to be up at 8 AM the next morning.

Somehow, my stack has grown to something like 600 EUR by now. My friend tells me that I should hit the poker tables if I feel like it, but I keep on playing and chatting with him for a while more. But since the cash game has seats open, I finally decide to play poker for the first time in almost a month. I take the 450 EUR in chips I have in front of me at the Black Jack table and move to the cashgame - 2/5 NLT is the game being played. Let's ****ing do it!

***

I had lost a bit, nothing out of the ordinary, just not hitting any flops, so I was down to a tad over 300. I open some semi-decent hand from the CO to 25 over a limp, button calls, one of the blinds three-bets for like 40% of his stack to 100, I let it go, flop is J82, the money goes in and the button wins it with 82s against an overpair. The very next hand I open 76o, cutoff calls and one of the blinds as well. Flop is KQ6 with two diamonds, SB checks and although it is an OK:ish flop to cbet on, I decide not to, but now the cutoff (82 player from last hand) bets something like 25. Blind gets out of the way and I decide to peel and see what happens. Turn is the beautiful seven of clubs, now putting two clubs and two diamonds on the board. I check, CO bets something like 75, I jam and he tank-calls. We run it twice and I win against a presumed Kx hand - he didn't have any of the flush draws at least, since one board came a diamond, and the other one a club.

Good times.

***

A drunk old (60+) player at the table, who is playing bad and erratic, but aggressive, poker asks the player to his left, "What do you think of our new president?" It is instantly clear to me where this conversation is heading - Latvia recently elected a new president who is openly gay, and while the president here has mainly representative functions, it still is a big deal. The person who was elected president is our Minister of Foreign Affairs, a relatively young (like 45-50) but experienced and charismatic politician who has wide popular support.

Of course, the fact that he is gay is something that a lot of right wing folks and politicians have made a huge deal of - some speaking in openly homophobic terms, others conveying their homophobic views more covertly, like "How will he be able to do his presidential functions without a first lady?"

"Well", the player who was asked the question responds, "I think he is one of the best candidates Latvia could have hoped for."
"But he is a ****ing shitpusher!"
"What does that have anything to do with him as a politician?"

Now, what was a positive surprise to me that out of the other five players at the table, four actively opposed him and his views. When he asked the table if we have children (we all did) and what we would do if our sons came home and said they're gay, we basically said something along the lines of nothing, what can we do? It's not like it's a choice. Would you still love them? Of course! To which he then said that if his son said he was gay, he'd ****ing shoot him. After some bewildered looks and comments like wtf man, that's just sick, the conversation died out and we kept playing poker.

Personally, I'm not offended by extreme views, however I do often find them quite repulsive and primitive. I'm just too jaded to feel offended I guess. And I'll speak up if I feel that someone's in the wrong. But I am also quite sick of people getting offended over basically everything (and making a big deal out of it - I mean, okay, you´re offended, so ****ign what). However, his comments were so extreme that I´d certainly understand people being offended by them.

***

After a button open to 25 over a few limpers, I look down at TT in the big blind. I am playing a stack of 120 BB at this point. I could just flat, but that would be a weak-ass pussy play, right? And after all, I've been doing coke all night and although the effects are all but gone at this point, I didn't come here to play weak-ass pussy poker, right? I make it 100 to go, button calls. Flop is decent enough - Q87. I ponder checking, but on such a board I feel that I will get pushed off of my equity a whole lot since I will have a tough time calling down most runouts. However, in another three-bet pot against this player I did c-bet and then check-folded unimproved AK on the turn, so bloating the pot seems quite shitty as well. But, hey, no weak-ass pussy poker, right?

I bet 70, he calls. Turn is a good card - a five. So the board now reads Q875, that five can't have changed anything, but what do I do now? I mean, TT seems too strong of a hand to check-fold here, but I hate the idea of calling a big bet (and bluffcatching for all my chips on at least some runouts) with an underpair here. So I go back to my mantra of no weak-ass pussy poker and bet 150, hoping to take it down right here. He tanks for quite a while, before ultimately calling.

Now I am unhappy - AQ and KQs are definately in his range. Of course, so is 88/77/87s, all hands that have me in very, very bad shape. We head to the river and it's a pretty damn good one - another queen. This makes it much more unlikely that he has AQ/KQ (of course, it's not impossible). But what should I do now? I have a tad under 300 left in my stack, the pot is over 600 EUR, so I don't have a lot of fold equity. I start to realise that I maybe ****ed up my turn sizing, but on the other hand I feel I need to go pretty big OTT - another bet of 100 would be quite useless. So I ponder my options, and in end I just ****ing jam. Of course, if he has a boat, I am screwed, but maybe he can fold like JJ once in a while? And... well, I didn't feel like check-folding when another queen comes, and if I am ready to call, then why not just jam myself?

I fade the snap-call, so no boat at least, and probably no queen either. So, what the **** can he have here? I stare at the board and remain silent while he tanks and tanks and tanks... and then calls. Dejectedly, I flip my tens and say "you win". He looks at the tens, says, "no, you're good", re-checks his cards and tosses them in the muck, saying he had an eight. Now, that was a pleasant surprise - I guess I got a value bluff through. Guess he thought I was getting out of line with AK or something like that. Now in retrospect, with a sober mind, I actually think that this is quite an interesting spot for both players - I was playing loose (especially pre, although I did fold to three-bets with marginal hands), so him putting me on a bluff isn't really that weird and he does get good pot odds. From my point of view, I probably should have gone for a more passive route somewhere in the hand, but in the end it turned out really well - not often that you get three streets of value with an underpair to the board.

With this win, my stack is now almost 1300 and I have a good profit for the night after being down to 50 EUR of the 400ish I brought to the casino.

***

But that was the end of the fun and the interesting spots. Did get involved in a couple of hands mainly with Homophobe (HP). One hand I had raised A2, flop A43 monotone spades (I have none), checks around, turn 4, HP bets, I call. River 3, HP bets 100, I call only to get shown A3. I open 33 to 25 over a few limpers, flop a set on Q43, c-bet, HP calls. River is a jack or something, HP checks, I bet, HP unfortunately folds. Was really hoping he had a queen. Someone opens, HP calls, I have KQo on the BB I consider folding since I don't want to three-bet this spot against these particular players, but in the end I call. Flop is KT5 with two diamonds (I have Qd, king is also diamond), I check, 82-Guy bets 20, HP calls, I call. Turn is a jack, giving me an open-ender. I check, 82-Guy bets 75, HP calls and I call. River is an eight, I check, 82-Guy checks, HP checks. I have a feeling my hand will be good since 82-Guy mucked as soon as HP checked, but after I show HP flips over J5o for turned two pair. Then I open 84s from the CO, 82-Guy and HP call. Flop has two of my suit, 82-Guy checks, HP bets around pot, I call, 82-Guy calls. Turn blank, both players check and I check it back. River is the ace of hearts, giving me a flush, check-HP 50 and I make it 150. 82-Guy folds, HP asks if I have an ace, tanks for a while and then folds. Too bad.

A few orbits later I cash out for 955 EUR, a profit of 555 EUR. I dump 50 in a slot on my way out (no bink). Get home at 3 AM, leave 200 EUR for my wife and go to bed.

Felt good to play poker again and the 2/5 game was actually quite decent, despite having a few grinders in it. Will see when I play next time and what I play - but until then, all the best to you, my dear readers!

This Degen is Back in Action

On Saturday I get a message that a game will be running on Monday, at the place where cashgames usually run on Wednesdays. My wife has taken the kids for a short trip abroad, I'm going to be home alone, and at work I basically have one large project to work on for the next couple of months - the rest is just boring **** I can do with half a brain. So I tell the host I'll join. The next day, a friend who lives abroad messages me and invites me to celebrate his birthday on Monday - I tell him I'll gladly join for a couple of hours before my game. Come Sunday evening, I message my dealer and he brings a bag of white powder - all set for a big homegame come-back!

After hanging out with some friends and chilling out and doing some lines, I call a cab and head over to the game. I am feeling it - this is for sure going to be my night. I am unstoppable, I am going to make hands, I am going to get paid, I will get clever bluffs through, I will win big!

***

"I shouldn't have shared my stuff with MG", I half-jokingly, half-dejectedly tell the table.

It is around 3 AM and I am stuck, big time. In for 900 EUR, the last two 200 EUR buy-ins are on credit since I didn't bring enough cash and also gave 200 to another player who wired money to me after running out of cash. No problems with the credit, as I'll cover by wire transfer as soon as I bust, but I still prefer playing my own money.

After sharing some of the contents with MG some time after midnight, he has been running hotter than the sun and is now sitting on a huge stack. Meanwhile I, who was off to a good start, am now buried. I can't make a hand or a draw and as the game has now evolved/degenerated to mainly being bomb pots, it is basically hard to make money when you GII four-ways on the turn with the nut flush on one board and a gutshot+two pair on the other, only to see all your money gone as the wrong board pairs on the river. Or getting it in with two pair and OESD on one board and wrap on other board, only to lose to ****ing naked two pair that improves to better two pair on one board and a pair of tens or some **** on the other board, where my wrap misses. And so my money burns, burns and burns.

Me and MG still have around two lines each left. As I take another sniff of the powder I decided that it's time to go home as soon as I lose the money I have in front of me.

***

The first board comes down J98 rainbow, the second 543. I am first to act and I look at my cards: K Q J J T.

I now have a healthy stack of around 650, as I managed to spin my last 200 up by first winning 75% where I had the nuts on one board (top boat w/ quad blockers) and the same full house as my opponent on the other board, and then I managed to stack another opponent with a short stack. And I have recently taken my final line, I feel the confidence flowing through me, as I lead out for a bet of 20. With one board basically locked up and the second nut flush draw on the other board, I feel that a bet here is a must - many players in this game will call one bet quite light on the flop, so building a pot right away is essential, and then I can decide on my course of action on the turn, depending on who is in and what cards come down.

I get called in three spots, basically standard in this game (we were six- or seven-handed at this time). The first board is a beautiful eight, giving me top boat, and on the second board a jack shows up, now improving me to top set there. The boards now read:
J98 8
543 J

After thinking it over, I decide to mix it up here and check, although I will quite often continue with another bet here. The next player checks, now MG bets 75, fold, and it's back on me. Time to apply the pressure - I pot it to 310, with 285 behind. Folds back to MG who now goes deep in the tank. With him tanking for so long, I start to think that maybe I can scoop unimproved - I don't think he is betting here without equity on both boards, and I don't think he would be tanking this long with 65, although maybe he is just scared of getting quartered or something? I silently stare at the board, begging for a call, and he finally calls.

The final two cards are dealt:
J98 8 7
432 J K

Of course, I jam my last 285. MG now starts counting combos, saying out loud that I am the type of player that could pull this off with just 65 and asks for a pot count, and finally calls it off. I show and he mucks, claiming he had nut hearts and a spade draw on the bottom board, and 98 for a lower boat on the top board. Some players discuss this hand, they agree with MG's reasoning and that if he calls the turn, he has to call the river as well. Now, I agree with the second part, but for the first part I am not that sure.

I am actually not sure I would c/r 65 OTT here, not sure at all. Of course, it depends on what I hold on the other board, but pulling a play in this spot with naked 65 on a board where half the deck could have me dead on the river? Maaaybeee if I had like AAJ65 w/ nut spades or something, but still - I don't think his read here is correct. At this moment I wasn't really steaming either, since I was on the come-back trail, and would I really want to play such a monster pot with just a made straight? I mean, depending on my mood, I might, but it would be a punt IMHO.

So yeah, basically my image paid off and I raked home the biggest or second-biggest pot of the night.

***

It's 5:15 Tuesday morning as I finally get to the taxi (the game broke around 5 AM), having spent the last half hour or so doing my best not to fall asleep at the table - as the stimulant effects of the powder i insufflated throughtout the evening wore off, fatigue hit me like a freight train. After winning the big pot, I basically played solid ABC poker for the rest of the night, winning some smaller pots and losing some smaller pots, just protecting my win. In the end I was in for 900, out for 1250, so all in all a succesful night.

***

Life-wise things are good. Have started going on longer (40km+) bike rides, which is great for fitness, weight loss and fun. Also proud that my 11-year old daughter joined me once - I wanted to go for a bike ride, she wanted to go for a swim, so I said that we should bike to a lake outside of town. I thought she might have problems with the distance, but she managed 41 km with a swimming break inbetween without any problems at all. She's active (swimming and kickboxing/boxing) and in good shape, but still - we drove at an adult's pace and she just kept it up with no issues whatsoever. A friend of mine also likes to go biking, so we have started going together as well, which is fun and gives us more of a chance to explore new routes etc. We usually bike, then find some random place we haven't been to for dinner (preferrably in some suburb) and a few cold ones. A really nice way to explore and excercise at the same time.

Doesn't look like there will be any more poker for me this week - family came back this evening, I have a lot of work to do, and on Friday I'll move out to our summer house. Out of the next five weeks, four of them I will be on vacation, so I'll certainly travel into town for some games when I feel like it. Hopefully I can get back to playing at least once a week again - I had great fun at this game. Next week I'll hopefully be able to get into town and pick up my bike as well, I invited my friend out to the summerhouse and our plan is to bike there - it's a tad over 60 km, but the entire way is flat, so not really that challenging, I've done that ride a few times before but I am quite sure this will be the easiest ride so far. Somehow I feel in better shape physically than in a long while, had no problems getting on the bike and doing 40 km the first time I rode a longer distance (like a month ago) - I guess swimming three times a week between September and June did more good for my general health than I expected.

Forgot to add a hand that I played quite horribly on the river. To my defense, it was the penultimate hand of the night, and I was extremely tired, but still - it's a good example of a bad thought process.

First board was K74, second was AK3. Flop went bet-call-call, I call on the button with K7x with some backdoor equity on board two. Turn: K747, AK34. I make the almost-nuts (almost since I can get quartered if someone else has K7) on one board and have no equity on the second, action goes bet-fold-call-call. River is great for me: K7475, AK34K. My almost-nuts are now the nuts, since all the kings are accounted for. Now, action goes bet 60, jam 160ish, and it is back on me. We are around 1k effective with the aggressor, and here I re-potted it. ****ing horrible.

The correct play is, of course, to just call, since there are two probabilities here: either the player who has been betting all the way has the nuts on the second board, or he doesn't have the nuts on the second board. If he doesn't have the nuts there, there is virtually no chance that he will call a re-raise, if he does have it doesn't really matter what I do. There is no scenario where a jam allows me to push him off of a chop, and since there is no sidepot there is no incentive to try. Much better to just call the bet and hope that he will call with whatever non-nutted hand he has. Now, I am not sure he would have called anyway - me cold-calling a bet and a jam is super strong anyway - but it at least would have given me a chance of winning a little bit more in this pot.

So, I´ve been lazy on the update front, and I have no real time to do a proper write-up, but since I won´t play any more poker in July I guess I can wrap it up now.

Played four times total, results:
+350
+280
-290
+175

For a total net result of +515 for the month of July.

The first two sessions were extremely swingy - especially the second one. After a few hours, I was up around 1000. A couple of hours later I was buried for -600 and playing for another 400 in credit (or something along those lines, the exact numbers are hazy), in the end I cashed out for a pretty profit. In that game one of the players lost 3500 EUR - in a 1/1 game that turned into a 5 EUR ante double bord bomb pot game. Granted, he was drunk and high and playing extremely bad, calling a lot with non-nutted hands in double board PLO, often when only having equity on one board as well, but still. Losing that kind of money in this game is quite an achievement.

That session was extremely degen - at around 4 AM, we were six-handed. As I got up from the table, I asked "Who wants a line this time around?" and all the players wanted one. The coke use percentage at the table was between 60-100% all evening/night, the game broke at 7 AM and I got home at 8 AM since my taxi got stuck in morning traffic on the way home.

The last two sessions were much calmer (and sober) - in the losing session, I basically got called down when bluffing (naked ace bluff + blocker bluff) which accounted for most of the losses. One of the bluffs was actually fun, since the player I lost to started talking to the guy next to me that "he´d never use that kind of sizing with value, he´d go big on the turn and then smaller on the river". I had bet something like 50% OTT and nearly full pot OTR. So, yesterday against this same guy in the same situation I went for something like 90% pot OTT and got a fold. Only showed the nut blocker, why not let him think that I have an obvious sizing tell? Just have to remember to go small-big with value next time...

Yesterday was calm and for a change I was only in for 350 EUR in total (150+200), basically just cruising along all night after winning a big one when semi-floating against one of the more active regs who battles me a lot (and who also can pull plays) - I had raised or three-bet a good hand (AKQJds with a dangler) pre, flop was T8x, checked to him, he bet 70% or so from the button, folds to me and I call, we go heads up to the turn which is the king of hearts giving me the flush draw as well, I check, he pots (something like 110), I have a tad over 200 behind and jam, we run it twice and I hit a straight on one board and a flush on the other to scoop. From there it was smooth sailing until the last hours, where I lost two preflop all-ins against smaller stacks (was ahead both times, however as in PLO5, only something like 60-40), and then lost a big one. Now, I don´t recall the positions - it went either bet-call-call, bet-call-call, bet-jam-fold (with me being last), or check-check-bet-call-call, check-check-bet-call-call, check-check-bet-jam-fold - but I flopped middle set on KQJ on one board, and just on overpair on 774 on the other board. OTT, the boards were KQJJ and 7746, and OTR the boards read KQJJ4 and 77469.

After the second player jammed, it was around 400 for me to call to split, I had but something like 100 in. So the pot must have been around 8-900 or more after his jam. It´s kind of a shitty spot to be in, the player that jammed shouldn´t really have that many KK or JJ in his range after playing it so passively, but on the other hand it can´t be discounted as well as there is a good argument to be made for not raising before the river with nuts that virtually can´t be outdrawn. The fun thing is that if the second doesn´t jam, but just calls OTR, I would actually consider jamming myself here since the first player was short (had basically nothing left after the river bet) and I am sure that the player who jammed wouldn´t just cold-call the nuts in this spot. Anyway, I end up tanking for a while and then I fold, and of course it turns out that both players are playing the second board - the player who jammed won it with 97x, hitting one of the few outs he had for a better boat, and won the first board with complete trash, like one pair or something like that.

In the long run I think that this is a fold as played though.

Oh, yeah, the second-last hand of the night was also quite tough - I had A8432 on A57 and AJ5, there was a bet and some calls on the flop, OTT the boards read A56T and AJ53 with flush draws on both, it checked to be, I bet, the next player called (the same guy that won the hand above), a shortstack raised to 150 and I called, and after tanking for ages the third player came along as well. OTR the flush draws bricked, boards read A56T4 and AJ539, I check, next player pots for like 500+, shortstack calls off his last 22, and I have no choice but to call although I don´t really like it, since I doubt that my straight is good. We split the big side pot, I get quartered on the main pot as the short stack had 42 as well (big stack hade 87x with some flushdraw, my pair was actually the best hand on that board OTT).

Anyway, it´s been fun being in action. Not sure when I´ll get back to the tables, have two weeks off starting next week and I am hoping for some of that Mediterreanean heat to reach us (+16 this morning and heavy rain, that´s not ****ing summer) in time for my vacation.

You're a great story teller, and quite a degen! Keep it up bro! Wouldn't recommend going to the tables after a bunch of booze, stick to coke~

Thanks! Yeah, I very rarely drink at all nowadays and if I do it’s mostly like a couple of beers. I actually try to go to the Wednesday game by car most of the time, as this ensures that I’ll stay sober (and usually get home at like 3-4AM and be able to work with almost full effort the next day if there’s a need for that). Which logically isn’t the case if I get home at 8AM having done my last line at 6AM…

Haven’t been playing since my last post and looks as though I’ll be out of action next week as well (vacation, so I’m planning to chill in our summer house the whole week).

Easy Come, Easy Go

Finally some poker - a solid two weeks without gambling, but it's Wednesday night, the game is going to be shorthanded and not really have any major spots, but hey, no gamble, no future! I drive to the game, fully intending to stay perfectly sober, since last week was kind of wild. Had a few friends over on Wednesday just to chill out, but that "chill out" plan kind of got shattered due to the fact that I had picked up a quite large amount of coke since I had a childhood friend visiting Thursday-Sunday, so we ended up partying until 4 AM or so. Thursday and Friday me and my friend chilled out in our summer house, not overindulging in anything, just enjoying beautiful sunsets and joints, but on Saturday we came back into town and started at 2 PM - and ended a few hours before my friend needed to go to the airport for his flight home.

So, yeah, sober is the way to go. A break from all things degen. Well, except for some casual gambling, right?

***

On the river, I have the nut flush, so I bet pot. 60. I just lost a pot where I had misread my hand, and didn't reload immediately, but now I made the nuts on the river and bet the pot with just 12 behind. Now, the next player calls, but then the player after him jams? What the ****? Who in their right mind is jamming a non-nutted flush into two players on the river? I re-check my hand and notice that I had the ace of clubs instead of the ace of diamonds, and that I am actually playing a ****ing five high flush in five-card Omaha. So I manage to misread my hand twice in the same orbit, costing me around 150 EUR. And I am sober. Like, completely ****ing dead sober, and have been so since Sunday. What is going on?


***

Me and the game host, M, get into some fun spots. We played one round of bomb pots, one round of regular poker, and in one spot where it has checked around on two streets I bet the river just to steal the pot. He is about to fold, but then re-pots. It folds to me, and I look at my stack, and all I am thinking about is jamming and getting him to fold his trash... but I am once again shortstacked (how the **** did that happen again?) and I can't fold him out. I spend around three minutes tanking, which is extremely long for me, before I reluctantly fold top pair on one board and nothing except the pair of nines I hold in my hand on the other. Of course, I would have won half, since he only had trash.

In another fun spot we were playing PLO5 with the option to change one card after the flop betting round. When changing, you get one card open which you can decide to take it or not, if you don´t take it, you get a dark card. So, the flop was Q9x, I had 99 in my hand and bet the flop. At the change, M got a queen as his open card, and chose not to take it. The turn was an 8, he checks, I bet 50, he jams for 170 and now I know he probably has a straight or a combo draw (or two pair+draw or something), and I of course snap it at these odds since I know he can´t have a higher set. Unfortunately, he had the straight and I didn´t improve, but the ability to change a card does add an interesting dynamic at times.

I got him in another spot as well, the final board was something like AJ6QA or something along those lines, I check-raised him all-in with just the ace blocker in six-card PLO and he more or less insta-mucked 66. A great spot to bluff in and I am glad I pulled the trigger. Now, the spots where he got me? Ah, let´s not talk about the less fun things in life now, okay? But basically there were a few spots on the river where he either had the nuts or just blockers and my instincts were off and I got it wrong. I did however let go of the second nut flush (holding three diamonds) in a spot where he bet pot and got called OTT - turned out I was right.

***

But in the end, it´s the money that matters. M ran hot for the last two hours or so, and I did not. I ended up one of the biggest losers at the table with a 515 EUR loss - incidently, the precise amount I was up in July. I was at break even a couple of hours before the game broke (in for 1000 EUR, so could have been worse), so, yeah, you win some, you lose some. Got home at 5AM, sober, feeling good today although it would have been nice to book a win. Didn't play too good to be fair, so the loss was deserved - I mean, if you can't tell the difference between a ****ing club and a diamond, you deserve to lose your money.