Hodge Podge

A few odds and ends: The Thursday night home game was fun and well-attended again. We had 10, and despite Esther telling me on Wednesday that she was "sort of seeing someone" when I asked her out, she still sat next to me on my right. There doesn't seem to be any awkwardness, which is nice. We shared a blender-full of my Double Tequila Margaritas, and I'm pretty sure the booze caused her to raise preflop with AQ-sooted (she was rather flushed and giggly at the time). Normally she is so tight and so passive preflop that any raise means AA or KK. In previous games, she has had AK, QQ, or JJ in late position with only limpers and didn't raise preflop.

And I love to have her on my right, and not just 'cuz she's easy on the eye. Any bet from her means business. In fact, early in the night, I saw a flop holding ATo in an unraised pot. Flop is A72 or something like that. Esther bet into me, and I called without thinking. As the turn produced a six, I thought "Hmm.. her kicker could be anything, really. I'm probably in big trouble." She checked to me on the turn, so I saw a free card - a ten, giving me top two pair. She called my bet and showed me AK.
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I was feeling tired and not at all up for driving through SoCal's rainy highways on Friday night, so I cancelled my rsvp at the PCS tourney. John and Tim both finished in the money again. So far this season, both have started at the same table and both have monied each week. This is the same table that I've been assigned to. In the first tourney, I asked to be moved to the outside table (because I had a hat, and I wanted to sit at the table with two new guys that I got a read on in the previous season.) I know that Tim and John LOVE to play against me. They think I'm weak/tight post-flop (and I am. or was.) and can probably read me reasonably well.

I really wanted to go, too. I was feeling really well about my early play last week, and was looking forward to building on it. Oh, there's always next week. My PCS ranking languishes at 5.9 (5.5 is dead average, and smaller numbers are better), while Muto, John, and Tim head the leaderboard. The big surprises this season are Pistol Pete and Fast Eddie trailing even me.
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And I've had another nice upswing at UB, so it's time to post an update. I've rocked the last five sng's to the tune of first, first, fifth, second and second. The two second's were in $5 sng's, which marked a nice contrast to the first few cash sng's I tried (and floundered out of). I have nothing to be scared of - the 200pt sng's are tougher on average than the $5 sng's. I've gotten to a point where I'm at least break even on the 200pt sng's, so I should make the $5 sng's a regular thing. So long as I'm smart and cautious in the early going. I do take great pride in some chump drawing out on me early, then coming back and moneying.

I think I should spend more time playing pot-limit Omaha. At my last $2 table and $25 table, I doubled up both times in roughly an hour, and I could've left the $2 table earlier with 3+x my buy-in. It's tougher to find a $25 table that will pay off your great hands, but if you can, it's gold. At the $25 table, I had some guy checkraise me with KKxx after the J62-rainbow flop with me holding JJQT-double suited. I'm a neophyte PLO player, so I know that flopping top set isn't bulletproof, but it is a really nice start, especially when the board isn't well-coordinated. It's probably also time I started using UB points to enter more tourneys, or sitting at the UB points ring games.

$403.06 real, $279.01 bonus, 5334.20 points. (Woo woo!! Over $400 cash and 5K points!)