Some updates, because I've been bad

It feels like forever since I've posted. Shame on me. In my defense, I've been playing a whole lot of poker, which I'll summarize shortly.

In short, my poker playing seems to be on another level lately. My results, while positive, aren't in the stratosphere like other results, but I just feel *on* somehow. I'm making good reads, for the most part, and bluffing successfully a whole heck of a lot better than I was before. I've come to the conclusion that the successful cash players I've seen tend to pounce harder when they spot weakness. Now this is no great bit of knowledge. Everyone knows that aggression wins in cash games, but for the first time, I've been successful in implementing it. Both in tournaments and cash games, I've been able to pick up important pots with nothing but air and a story. Now I just need something to bring it all together...

To recap my last week of poker...

After the long form tourney (Yay Liezl!), I went down to AC for a weekend of Borgata poker with W and Viv. For the first time, I tried my hand at the 2-5 tables. I dropped a buyin early by making an awful read at the table. I don't do this often, but when I do it stings. There was a guy at the table who vastly outchipped everyone else. He was sitting with $3300 in chips in huge stacks and I was a new player. About five hands in, I flop middle pair, top kicker. I bet the pot, he calls. The turn paired the lowest card on board. I bet, he raised. Instead of giving up, I decided he was betting a scared card with a big stack into a skittish new player. So I pushed and he called with something like 6-3 and trip sixes(yes, I had raised PF). I pulled out another buyin posthaste. When the big chip stack got up, I took his seat in the middle of the table. I went down another $150 but doubled up on my very last hand there when I turned Broadway against a guy with two pair. Oh well. I took my newly replenished stack to Viv's table where we spent the rest of the night. By the time it was over. I had turned my $150 (at my low point) into $750. I even accomplished my weekend objective, which was to take down a sizeable pot with nothing in my hand, just to see if I could at a $2-$5 table. I was on the button with 3d6d and there was a PF raise to $20 from the 5th seat. There were 3 callers and I, on the button, came in for the ride for the specific purpose of trying to take this down on the flop. The flop came with 3 lowish cards (no pairs for me) but two diamonds, giving me a crappy flush draw. B-I-N-G-O. It checked all the way around to me (uh, a gift?) and I threw out $75 into a pot of about $100. Fold, Fold, Fold it went until it got to Viv on my right. She sweated it (turns out she had middle pair) but mucked and I proudly showed my semi-bluff. Yay! Unfortunately, I was getting super tired at that point, so I headed to the room for a nap.

The rest of the weekend was uneventful except that I dropped my profits, plus some, playing limit games, including a particularly vicious game of $10/$20 O/8-Stud/8 with a half kill. I had played a similar game in Vegas with nice people but these guys are assholes! Not because they beat me, mind you. They just are big dicks. I was putting my chips down on the table, not even in my seat yet, when seat 1 says to me, "Who told you that was a nice shirt?". What a cocksucker. He was a big fat corpulent dick and I thought of the perfect comeback about 10 minutes later ("Your nutrionist"). I hate when that happens. Still, I had a good time in AC.
When I got back to reality, we had a tourney that I was in and I was crushing until W sucked out on me in awful fashion. I got her to push all in in the BB with AT vs. my AQ and she hit her Ten on the turn. I would have had half the chips in play if I had won that. Instead, I went out on the bubble and made nothing while W slid into 2nd place, bemoaning *HER* luck the whole way! Grrrr....

This past Friday, I made my return to the underground poker rooms of Manhattan. This time, I visited a midtown club with a single table that I'll call, "Club Tough". I wasn't actually going to play, but the game got somewhat short handed and I did. I had just come off a great night at my own table. I took second in the tourney and won $200 in the cash game, but I ended up dropping $200 back at this table. There was a young sharky kid making moves and not allowing limpers at all. I bluffed two nice pots off him, but otherwise couldn't make a hand all night.
We have lots of new poker coming up at Wall Street, including the infamous H.O.S.E. mixed game. I'm itching to play.