As a kid, I saw newsreel footage of the Germans attacking Malta with Stukas. I've never wanted to go there.

Thanks golddog! As you may know, I am an inveterate procrastinator. I have no more vacation time left this year, so I'll probably start looking into this next year.

The problem is that there's always the siren call of the WSOP every year, there to eat up my vacation days, as the idea of one bink there would grant me my retirement grease, so to speak.

Mexicans call us Norteamericanos, which...well, they are as much Norteamericanos as us and the Canadians, as well as the Central Americans.

Mods gonna mod

My brother and I visited Hannover, Germany a few years ago. He's not much of a historian, and he asked me, "Was this city part of the war?" And I told him how we'd burned it down and nearly levelled it in '44-'45; hardly one brick left standing on another.

War is hell. I have hope that travel can build understanding and empathy, though with the Ugly Americans and the Lager Lads, it's probably on a case-by-case basis.

To you and Dubnj0y's point about "Americans", when in Costa Rica I asked, in my halting Spanish, if the Ticos considered Mexicans Central Americans. The response was no, that they are Norteamericanos, just as you say.

Yesterday, I did not play the Sunday NFL live poker promo. My manufactured excuse was that I had developed an unsightly pimple, and I did not want to spend several hours in a cardroom having my face closely studied by strangers.

Of course I could have worn a mask, but that pimple wasn't the real excuse for not going. Really, I wanted to stay home and drink all day. That was the actual motivation.

I could have drinks for free at the casino, but I always make a habit of keeping my consumption under the legal driving limit. I wouldn't have to do that if I'd stayed at home.

Tonight, I'm getting back on the horse and heading out to the cardroom.

No Monday Night Football promo hits for my table last night, and I did not bring my own A game either: too much limping along and not enough bumping it up, which led to a bizarre hand which I will post later, a hand that could have been avoided if I'd raised pre over a bunch of limpers instead of going along with the crowd, which is an easy trap to fall into if you're at a friendly table and being sociable.

The problem with playing like the field is that the field is a net loser. I will do better on Thursday.

Springfield MGM: 4 hours
(-$175.00)

Running Total: 28.5 hours, +$808.00

Always remember that insanity is contagious.

Correct. The Facebook and YouTube algorithms lean heavily on that fact.

Here is my hand from Monday night.

UTG+1, the effective stack with $350, limps, MP limps, BTN limps, I complete in the SB with 76, BB checks.

(Pot $10) - 5 players

Flop: Q78

A good flop for me. A ton of limped pot multiway flops have checked through at this table. I don't want this to happen. I bet $7. BB folds, UTG+1 calls, MP folds, BTN calls.

Pot ($31) - 3 players

Turn: A

I consider going for a checkraise to target A7x and A8x which have improved to two pair, but I have not tagged either villain as aggro, and I do not want a check through. I bet $15. Too small. I should have gone $20 or $25.

UTG+1 raises to $45, BTN folds, I call.

Pot ($121) - heads-up

River: 2, or some sort of brick

I check. UTG+1 smoothly slides out $100.

Pot ($221) - heads-up, $100 to call.

I go into the tank. This is why you don't limp along. With four other players having seen the flop, my chances of having run into a higher flush are much better. This is where the adage "don't go broke in a limped pot" comes in, although in this case it's been downgraded to "don't light a hundo on fire on the river in a limped pot."

Taking 76s in the small blind and bumping it up to $20 over 3 limpers can be a high variance play, but it's the correct one if, like me, you've been card dead and your image is tight, and the table isn't stubborn/sticky and in to see a flop under any circumstances.

76s is not just a drawing hand multiway; it's a bluffing hand heads-up after being played aggressively pre. Say the fop comes K83. I breathe on the pot and villain turbo mucks most of the time, even sometimes with A3 and 44-77. Or he calls and then folds to a big turn bet. I pick up a small pot with air. Good result.

Or flop comes, as it did in this case, Q78, I bet and villain folds most of the time. When she does come along, the other villain, who has HighLow--which will be crushing me on the A turn--is instead watching from the sideline, because he didn't want to pay $18 more to see a flop.

I look at the villain and he looks very relaxed. He catches my eye and flips over K

Pot ($221) - heads-up, $100 to call.

This should be a call. I have just started rereading Zach Elwood's Reading Poker Tells, but I haven't gotten to the part on exposing single cards, but I should have remembered from reading it a few years ago that a villain's exposed card is designed to induce a desired assessment from hero leading to the desired action from hero. In this case villain is saying: I have a K-high flush, you should fold. Therefore he is bluffing with busted a K semibluff draw and I should call.

But, this is a very friendly table, everyone is chatting and joshing each other gently. Villain is a nice guy, a straightforward player who hasn't gotten out of line. He seems to be out to have some fun, and maybe to hit a football promo payout.

A few years ago, when I was in Las Vegas at the Mirage, I was making a motion in preparation to shove several hundred on the river with my top set, and that villain stopped me and showed me his better hand--a straight or what have you...just exposed both his cards and told me "I made enough on this hand", or something in that vein. I detailed that hand in this blog, but it's way the hell back there.

Anyways, to think that something like that is happening to me again is equivalent to being struck by a freak bolt of lightning after raising in a certain standard spot, then never raising in that spot again, for fear of a second freak bolt of lightning.

I should call. Call damn it. But again, he seems so relaxed. $100 is kind of the inflection point for a big bet at $1/$2. That's when you start checking for tells. But maybe $100 is nothing to him and he enjoys making a fun bluff with a card exposed. Or maybe he has the goods and will enjoy beating me when I call him, even after he showed me a card.

Also, also, also...thinking back a minute: I don't remember him rechecking his cards before he flipped over the K. Think about that. If one of his cards is not a club, wouldn't he want to check to be sure that he's flipping over the card with the club?

I fold.

You played it correctly. I play it differently. Comments by me on live hands are worthless unless I was there. So, a couple of comments:

With a pair and a flush draw on the flop, especially if I'm new at the table, I'll look for an opportunity to shove it all in, so I usually go for a check raise. This is a weird one, with all the limping.

A singleton Kc might play it the same way. In hold 'em, and even in omaha, I always know which card is which, so it would be no biggie to turn over the right card.

Every tell has an equal and opposite tell that is the same tell.

nhswp

As played flop and turn are fine, can go bigger OTT yes, but that's not what is the problem here. Rest is obv cratered. Having some bluffhappy players on the table would the only reason to check river here, and then you obv have to call no matter what. You basically commit yourself to a call OTR as soon as you check. If V shoves here maybe you have a decision and can fold given that the hand is messed up but not for anything around or less than pot.
Not sure why you would place so much emphasis on live reads, I think you come mostly from an online background too, that's what I always utilize in these kind of situations. I know my live reads are just not that good, that's why I never trust them too much and if in doubt just play things mechanically. Even if he happened to have a better flush here you can't fold, that will cost you money over time...

I don't have the visual memory to recall which card is on top, but I have a worse than average ability to think in pictures, so I might mistakenly believe that most people are like me and can't remember their card configuration.

I don't usually do tells much, either, but exposing a card is a big information dump and needs to be attended to. Anyways, looking at the math...

The SPR on the flop was 11.3, which is high enough for a lot of maneuvering on the turn and river, even to the point of calling a small raise on the turn, and then folding the river.

However, I put his range into Equilab and got the news that he gets to the river with more KcXo bluffs compared to KcXc goods, so I definitely should have called, and it wasn't even close.

But what I really should have done is raised pre.

Thursday night I could not get anything going. I opened marginal hands a few times and got 3-bet. I picked up a few premium pairs and got walks. I might as well have been playing my cards face up. Finally, a serial bluffer who had been donating around to the table finally picked up the goods vs me, and I had to call him down. Fortunately, $150 in football promo payouts granted me a partial bailout.

Springfield MGM: 4 hours
(-$100.00)

Running Total: 32.5 hours, +$708.00

My card dead run continued last night, where in 4 1/2 hours I did not make a single hand better than top pair good kicker, and that only once with KTs on a T763r board, which then I folded to a pot-sized raise on the turn when the two straight draws came in.

The football game saw a lot of scoring, and its many promo payouts missed our table entirely. I scrapped with what I was given, pounding on limpers and taking down some small pots, and I broke even.

Back again tonight.

Springfield MGM: 4.5 hours
+$9.00

Running Total: 37 hours, +$717.00

Still a very solid 19-20$/h thus far, keep it up, it will change for the better

Thanks Dubnjoy000! I've decided to wait until around 350 hours in before I start looking at the win rate. As long of a period as that sounds, it's still only around 9000 hands, which would be barely a data blip for online results.

For cash, however, we're expected to have a higher EV, and with that to get into the long run more quickly than online.

Last night I botched a hand so thoroughly that I have decided to forget the exact details of it, and move on. You might think that there is something to be learned from every mistake, but I knew well that I was making a series of mistakes at the time, and I made them nonetheless.

My mental process at the time looked something like this. What are you doing? You are butchering this hand. Stop it! Nope. Nope. You're still butchering it. Why? Knock it off. No! Why...do NOT bet out two green chips. Why did you do that? Yes, of course he called. What did you think would happen?

This is known as the Imp of the Perverse. I am subject to the shoulder guidance of the Imp from time to time, and when I'm at the tables, it costs me hours of EV every time. The Imp of the Perverse is an existential leak; and as such, difficult to plug with just study and practice.

$125 in promo payouts and some decent play outside of the Imp made for a modest win.

Springfield MGM: 4 hours
+$185.00

Running Total: 41 hours, +$902.00

I'm happy to see you back on the horse and making profits. Must be nice to have a casino close by.

By the way, how's the radio situation at the office?

Thanks Sheep! The casino is around 40 minutes away, which is nice, but it's located just off a harrowing highway interchange in the center of a small city, where I have to get over 3 lanes, from left to right, within 300 meters or so, so I've been rejuvenating my highway driving skills with every trip. There are back ways, but they're all loaded up with traffic lights, so it's the highway or no way.

As far as the office radio goes; you know, our entertainment culture is one of the things that makes the USA a worthwhile operation. We have great movies, great TV shows, great books and great music. Plenty of other countries have these things, but not in the sheer volume that we produce year in and year out.

So, to build a powerful radio station, and to format it to play just the 15 top hits over and over again--with an emphasis on the top 5, playing those 5 at least once every 90 minutes, when we have so much great music to choose from, all because the bean counters want to keep their song inventory costs down, is a profanity of the idea of music and what it does to benefit the human psyche over the course of a day.

I've gotten the office portion to play the dad rock station--which nowadays plays more than a pinch of grunge, officially making me an oldie's listener. I did it by convening an ad hoc meeting and pointing out that I was fairly low maintenance and didn't ask for much, but that that station and its constant repetition of Adele and Ed Sheeran and Bieber and Harry Styles and that Bad Habits song made me want to curl up into a little ball and die.

The old station still plays in the shipping warehouse, where I spend an hour or so a day, but the crew out there seems to like it, and they're out there for the duration, so I grit my teeth and bear it.

Addendum:

I've just realized that none of the artists mentioned above (Ed Sheeran being called out twice) are from the USA.

In any case it's the repetition, not the artist, that kills me.

Thanks for the update. I asked because I'm rather sensitive to that **** myself. Repetition, especially when it's something bad, is difficult to bear for me. But I've prolly poasted that before.

Did you ask your co-workers to Go Easy on You? Or to shake their Bad Habit of putting on a crappy radio station? In any case, now that you get to listen to a more varied playlist, I hope it won't go back to As It Was.

Well played, Sheep. I'm happy with the results...and the method. About Damn Time that I addressed the situation in a non-passive aggressive manner, rather than just Late Night Talking to myself about it.

On Thursday, I ran bad at the tables for most of the session. I started off card dead, to the point where I joked with the other reg at the table about only playing AA--after I'd 3-bet his CU open from the SB with A9o, and gotten a fold.

After 90 minutes of nothing I started to pick up a few hands, but they ran into bad runouts, particularly with A4 vs 33 on a 443 flop, and having to call off the shove raise from villain with his 75bb stack. That was an easy call and a poor result, and that's poker sometimes.

After picking up a $75 football promo payout, I found myself still close to $200 down, with time running out on the football game. But I had something better than the promo going for me, or someone better than the promo.

In my last session I talked about the Imp of the Perverse, and how that self-generated creature occasionally compels me to butcher hands, even as I retain full and painful real-time knowledge of how I'm butchering them.

There is another far more damaging aspect of the Imp that I have seen; never in myself, but occasionally in other players. That is the inability to leave the table until they've lost their entire stack. It does not matter how big they've build that stack--and their stacks can grow very, very large--they will play to lose it, all of it, and they will not leave the table until they see nothing but felt in front of them.

I've tried and failed to come up with a term for this rare type of player: felt-hungry, felt-compelled? No. For now I'll use the term "future busto".

In any case, I had one of these players at my table Thursday night. And I recognized that his presence automatically moved my EV meter further to the right than any casino promo ever could.

How to identify this uncommon and immensely valuable type of player and differentiate them from the other, more standard aggrodonks? I don't know, yet. Experience helps. Seeing a few of them in action over time helps. There are a few behaviors that I've noticed from them, but these seem to not be necessary, nor do they seem sufficient to identify the future busto. However, these can still serve as red flags--or green flags--if you label the behaviors relative to your earning prospects.

The first future busto behavior is using a very high preflop opening raise. At $1/$2 these opens usually range from $6-$15, sometimes increasing proportionally with the number of limpers already on board, and sometimes not, depending on the opener's ability.

This player was opening from $20-$35. That's the high end of a $2/$5 opening range bleeding into the low end of a $5/$10 open. Some of these future bustos are $2/$5 players, who seem to refuse to take the $1/$2 game seriously, even though losing a $1000 pot is exactly the same at $1/$2 as it is at $2/$5. I did not rate my dude as a $2/$5 player, I just saw him as someone who might be in the grip of the Imp.

Now, this player didn't 3-bet much preflop, preferring to flat call in the pots that had already been opened for a raise. I don't know if this should count as a future busto behavior or not, but it does differ from the standard aggrodonk's 3-bet weighted style.

Another tagged behavior comes after the flop, and that is bluffing based upon the other player instead of upon the board. Anyone folding to this player's aggression in one hand found themselves served up with more aggression on the next hand they played against him, for which they didn't have a long wait, as he seemed to try to get into a new hand with his bluffed opponent as quickly as possible.

Jumping back to the 3rd quarter of the football game:

At that point I was down close to $300. I had folded to this player twice already with speculative hands that hadn't turned into bluff catchers. I pick up KQ in the HJ, with future busto as the villain on the BTN.

This is an okay, sometimes marginal hand in that position. I much prefer it to be suited, but I'll open it with passive or bad players on my left and muck it if there are decent 3-betters on my left.

I open for $10, future no-stack V calls on the BTN and BB calls. My $350 stack is the effective one.

Pot ($31) - 3 players

Flop AT6

BB checks. I bet $15, V raises to $50, BB folds. I have a gutshot and the backdoor royal flush draw. More importantly, this is my flop. My range hits this more than V's, though that advantage narrows if our read is that V is not 3-betting at all pre. I go with the read that he is targeting me because I've folded to him recently. I call.

Pot ($131) - heads-up

Turn: 3

I check. V bets $75. I shove for my remaining $290. V expresses dismay and snap folds. I show the bluff.

Just because the Imp is compelling them to dump their stack doesn't mean that these players can't fold, if they're given sufficient indication that they're beat, and especially if all their opponent's chips have gone in, and they can't toss in the last bluff.

Future bustos tend to lose their stacks in two ways. (1) Getting it in preflop with marginal to good--but not premium--hands and (2) bluffing on boards that favor their opponents. For some reason this player didn't seem to call down with marginal hands on wet boards very often, like standard bad players do. I'll have to make a note of this and look for correlation.

The final future busto behavior is an odd one, but I've noticed it several times over the years, and it seems to correlate: they act drunker than they should be.

I keep an informal tally of who's drinking at the table and how many they've been having. My dude sat down at the table a half hour after me and drank two light beers over 3 1/2 hours, and acted like he'd had 12 of them. It's very strange. I don't know if these folks pre-game before they sit down, or get their drink on at another table, then move, or if gambling and/or the Imp's play style are themselves intoxicating in a way that mirrors the effects of alcohol. I've seen other future bustos drink no alcohol at the table, yet act as if they were drunk. It's a thing to look for, in any case.

So, we get to the end of the football game and I'm down around $170. My dude had been sitting on around $500 at the start of the 4th quarter, but now has around $200. It's hard to tell exactly what he has because he's holding around $85 in $1 chips, all of them having been seized--I would venture--as trophies for pounding on limpers preflop and bluffing out players postflop, with seemingly none of them thrown back into pots.

The football game comes to an end. After the final whistle, I'm usually racked up and heading for the cage before the next big blind hits me. But he is still sat down.

I wait.

Ten minutes later he open shoves his $200 from UTG. Folds to me in the
BTN. I look at QQ and reshove. The blinds fold, and my queens hold over his J9o.

Springfield MGM: 4 hours
+$30.00

Running Total: 45 hours, +$932.00

Nice comeback Suited!!! Albeit I would look to widen my range vs such a villain and look to open to a bigger sizing pre especially given he does not 3bet - and KQo in CO is DEFINITELY a +EV open. GL friend

Thanks Dubnjoy000! Today I once again ran into a future busto player at my table. More on that later.

You're right about the open. $15-$18 would've been better. And KQo is a clear open in the CO.

I was, however, in the HJ: one more away. It's still an open, unless there are aggro 3-betters left to act, given how it's dominated by 3-bet hands like KK, QQ, AK, AQ and even KQs, which is freerolling against it. Aggro 3-betters are allowed to have these hands, so playing KQo as a call to a 3-bet oop or 4-bet bluff can be very high variance.

I would not be scared to push the envelope and see if he would call anywhere in the 25-50$ range, especially that we are controlling preflop pot sizes, given he just about never 3bets

I happily open-raise KQo - and such is the standard - in 3bet happier online 6 handed games. Live, I will open it UTG 9 handed/fold to 3bets, as I want to make up by the slower nature of the games/softer fields by getting involved more frequently ; my 2cents . As always, all the best friend

Sunday's table was splashy and high variance, hosting 3-4 players who didn't mind tossing a lot of chips into the pot.

Splashy players are not necessarily bad players, as evidenced by the various cash poker livestreams playing nowadays on the Internet. At $1/$2, however, most of the action players have leaks, albeit different ones, or the same class of leaks with subtle variants that show up in different spots.

I don't have a natural talent for this game. I study it unthoroughly and plod along and pick up just enough to keep ahead of the curve on the lower levels, so when I try to pick up, organize and assign reads on 3-4 different players at the same time, I do it with the aplomb and overall success rate of a young cat chasing a laser pointer.

Tables like this also require that I accept high variance. One can win or lose several buyins within an hour here. Everything I'd made over the last 40-something hours had amounted to less than 2 buyins, and that entire profit and more needed to go on the line if I wanted to realize my EV.

Well, I failed in that when I botched one hand from being scared money.

With $450 in my stack I pick up AKo UTG and open for $10. UTG+1, a loose passive chaser of draws with around $80 in his stack, calls. BB, one of the action players, 3-bets to $45. BB has me covered.

I need to 4-bet here, especially with a player in between me and the 3-better. Considering that I'm UTG, a nice, chunky 4-bet up to say, $150 might get folds from middle pairs from most players--a fine result. But BB is one of the splashy players on whom I don't have a great read. If and when he 5-bet shoves, I don't want to leave my $150 baby out there for him to scoop up. That means I'll have to call off 225bb with AKo.

I just call the $45. UTG+1 shoves his remaining $70 and BB reshoves. I fold. Neither the A nor the K hit the board and BB scoops with his JJ. I save $405 and lose a bunch of Sklansky bucks with my scared money play. Not good.

So, with all this chaotic splashiness going on, the best thing for someone like me to do is to focus on the biggest potential donor, and to just play a solid, value-heavy game against the others. And for the second session in a row, I found myself sitting across from a future busto player.

He had the same symptoms of the Imp as the previous player, even drank the same brand of light beer, though he was more of a 3-better pre and more more of a chirper after the hand; this one, running his mouth relentlessly over the several occasions when he put his stack in bad and won.

And at the end of the football game, which saw our table winning no promos, I once again found myself down a couple hundo, when our reliable future busto put me all-in preflop for a good part of my $430 stack with...I don't know what, but whatever it was, my KK held, I felted him, and the Imp of the Perverse finally released him from the table.

Springfield MGM: 4 hours
+$203

Running Total: 49 hours, +$1135.00