Little Victories

I have no job. I have no girlfriend. I have no direction in my life. By many standards, I should be considered a loser. I am like a stoner letting the years of my youth float away, except I don't even get a good high out of the deal. But this isn't going to be a pity party because there are no neglectful parents or chronic illnesses to blame, just a man in his mid-twenties with just a little too much intelligence to settle for the mundane, but just a little short of the ambition needed to really do something about it. In fact, I am aiming to make this the first and last time I use this tone here. I know it will be a long time before I consider myself truly successful and happy. In the meantime, it is important for me to acknowledge, maybe even celebrate, the little victories in life. Most of them won't be relevant to my life's challenges, but that isn't the point. The point is that those moments that make you do a fist pump are great and deserve to be captured in a blog. By the way, "littlevictories.blogspot.com" and "fistpump.blogspot.com" were already taken.

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Tonight, I turned in another winning session at Hollywood Park's 200NL game ($3/$5 blinds). I played awfully, however, donking off chips with questionable hands and buckling under weak bets. Thanks to some bad plays by my opponents, I was able to see my stack size seesaw rather than just disappear into the felt. Several hours into the session, I was at $701 after posting the small blind. Now, I don't know if it's superstition or OCD, but I like cashing out with a nice even number. After tipping my usual dollar to the cashier, I would be walking out with a cool $500 in profit. Of course, this is a terrible basis for deciding when to leave a table. It is just one of those little illogical flaws I have in my game, like how some people have a favorite starting hand that they will play preflop when they otherwise shouldn't. In a situation like this, I even hope that someone will make a preflop raise so that I don't have to agonize over throwing in $2 to complete the blind and ruining my perfect chip count. Thankfully, there was a raise and I happily folded.

I go into tight mode, folding crappy hands as I wait for the big blind to come to me (I heard that writing/speaking in present tense makes for better storytelling). Then I am under the gun. Ah, one more fold and it will be time to go home. I take a peek and see A♣T♣. Just great... An ace-nine offsuit, I wouldn't have had trouble folding. I limp in and most of the table follows along. The flop comes 5♣6♣7♣. I fire out $20. The player to my left calls. Action makes it down to the cutoff and he grabs four yellow chips. But then he starts to mentally hem and haw. He shows his already-folded neighbor his hand. Finally he goes all-in. I flat-call, but the player on my left folds. The poor guy has a red 4-8 and now I'm sitting with about $850 in chips. I have another OCD dilemma now. Even stacks of chips are nice, but people like me also like to break arbitrary goals that we set. This has led to some headbanging in the past where a thought like "I have $490. I'll leave when I crack the $500 mark. Just gotta steal the blinds once or something." eventually resulted in me losing it all.

So I decide to stick around and go for $1000. I think you might have a feeling for how this story ends already. A few orbits later, I am on the button with pocket nines and a table full of limpers. I raise it up to $30, but I still get about five callers. The flop shows 9♥T♣Q♦. A little worrisome, but still a great flop for me. A woman bets $75 and a relatively short stack calls. I raise it to $200 to force the short stack to make an all-in decision. But first, the initial bettor is clearly not liking the raise. She hesitantly makes the call, the short stack calls, and the turn brings an 8♥. The woman's demeanor does a 180° and she confidently goes all-in for $300+. I groan and fold. She has J♥Q♥, the other player has some bullshit like J6o, and they chop up the pot.

Dang, just goes to show you should never question the sign of the even stack.

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Another victory today came in the form of this Flash game that I've been addicted to for the past couple of days called Amorphous+. I finally cleared the big nest after I-don't-know-how-many tries. Now to work on that Hall of Fame badge...