Be Childlike not Childish

I attended a birthday party for Charyl  today at an arcade/mini amusement park. Even though I was hanging out with medium age youngsters (the other birthday party attendees) and really young youngsters (gabillions of kids hanging out at Austin Park N' Pizza) I had a really good time. There is something very satisfying about passing a 20 something on the go kart track, crushing the competition on the Miniature Golf course, and having 6 year olds  eyeing your stack of arcade tickets and commenting "that's a lot of tickets". Yeah it is, and this pile of tickets cost me $20 in tokens and will buy me oh, about $5 worth of stuff at the counter. Jealousy will get you nowhere kid. Go ask your mom for more tokens and practice the Dump Truck game.

Here is what I learned: If you are a large slow moving target, don't expect to do well at lazer tag, especially if you haven't studied where exactly the targets are on the vests.

All in all it was a blast and I think the birthday girl had a good time, which is the important part.

On friday I went up to Winstar Casino on the bus. I wanted to see if I had the self control this time to avoid the Satanic Slot Machines (for the most part) and just play poker. Well I managed to do that, but still came out on the losing end against some seriously bad players, a couple of bad beats and one really bad decision 15 minutes before the bus left for home.

The first table I sit down with has a standard maniac directly to my right. Perfect. I am on his left and he is buried like 2 grand and raising every pot and throwing money away like it grows on trees. All I need to do is wait for a hand and move on this guy. I finally pick up a pair of 7's, he makes a raise like always and I shove . He shows 8 6 offsuit and catches an 8 on the flop, but I catch 7,7 on the turn and river to make quads. Nice.

I go card dead for a while and finally pick up AQ suited and shove my chips in again. I get one caller who seems strong, but maniac guy goes over the top and moves all in protecting my hand with the worst of it I am sure. Perfect. He shows J 8 and I catch a queen on the flop. Its looking good right? Not so much. There is also a 9 out there giving him a gutshot straight draw. He needs a 10 and only a 10 to beat me on the river. You can guess the rest of the story. I've got a serious case of run bad tonight.

I get up for a while and wander around. Later I come back to a different table. The play is horrible and the guy two to my left is a newbie (He watched the WPT a few times and thought, how hard can it be?) I lose half my stack with 3 Kings bad kicker against 3 Kings good kicker...standard. That's fine. I shouldn't have tossed in another buck with K8 suited. My bad. So I wait for a hand and pick up AJ in late position and move in for like $40. The newbie who hasn't folded a hand yet and is up $100's of dollars calls me with A9. Perfect. Just fade the 9 and we are back in this thing. You guessed it, 9 on the flop, no help for me. No biggie, after all I am only about a 70% favorite to win that one.

Time to rebuy. So I buy in for $200 and blind down to about $180 and there is only 15 minutes to go before the bus gets there. I figure I will play a big pot if I pick up a hand, and if not, we take the last buy in home with us. A girl who has been playing solid makes it $20 to go in front of me. I know  she has a hand. She has shown KK, QQ and JJ so far and always has the goods. I  look down at KK and think, she can't have AA can she? I mean she has already been a card rack the last hour with the big pairs. I shove and she instantly says in a calm voice "I call" I know before the cards are turned over. She has AA. I watch the board blank out and head for the bus.

So, where is the lesson in all this?

 First of all, avoiding the silly adrenaline rush of lucking out on a slot machine is a profitable play. Keep that silliness to a minimum.

Secondly, I am not a bad cash game player, I have made mostly good decisions and recently had bad results. The thing is, I am much more suited to playing tournaments. In cash games the bad players can luckbox you and you have to reload and give them a chance to do it again. Also, if you are completely card dead in a cash game it is boring and frustrating.  In tournament play, the bad players only get one shot at you and if your hand holds up, they are gone. They no longer have to be dealt with. Also in tournaments, there is value in folding when you are card dead, especially in the early levels. Players are mixing it up and some are even dropping out. Even when you can't play a hand, you are progressing toward a goal in tournaments..survival. That makes it less boring and frustrating.

I have cashed in about half the live tournaments I have played in. Cashed in Washington, Delaware, Las Vegas Oklahoma and my biggest cash was finishing 86th out of over 8000 players for just over $2000 in the Sunday Million online.

The good news in all of this is that Winstar is having it's big tournament series starting the last week in August and the Main Event the 1st week of september. I am going to play a couple of preliminary tourneys and try to buy in or satellite into the main event. Last year I had one $1500 cash in the series and would have gotten into the Main Event via satellite had my Aces held up against Kings. That one hurt. I would have been chip leader in the 4th level of blinds and breezed to a $2100 ticket.