Thursday, October 13, 2005

An open poker letter to Bluto

Dear Bluto,

I needed you last night. After losing all of my winnings over the course of the last three days, I entered a 2-table tournament, where you start with $1000, and they combine the tables like the multi when ten players are left. Payouts are for the top four players.

I've done alot of analysis of my play, and just decided that it needed some improvement, but also the bad luck couldn't continue forever. Well, three bad beats later, i was down to $300. Blinds were still low. I continued to play super-tight poker, and eventually turned it around to an average stack when the tables combined. I stayed tight and managed to become the chip-leader at the bubble. Then little-G showed up, complaining that she couldn't sleep. So I sat her down next to me and asked her advice on a couple of hands. Then my neighbor knocked on the door (at 11:30 p.m.), asking to borrow a few kilowatts of electricity because his power went out and he didn't want to lose the food in his deep-freeze. Figures I get all kinds of interruptions at this critical moment, but I took them all in stride.

I had checked post blinds and fold, because the four others were basically just taking turns stealing the blinds, and I hoped that a showdown would develop, leaving me out of the hand, but in the money. At that point, I had $6.5 K in chips, compared to the $2-3K the others had. When I returned, I had $5K.

This blind-stealing activity went on for a couple more orbits. I managed to steal a few myself, but I was scared because this is the point in the game where I usually screw up and then tilt, finishing out of the money. The blinds went up to $600/$300 and people got greedy. I led with pocket 7s, just a big blind bet. Short stack went all-in, there was one other caller, and the blinds folded, so I raised. The other caller folded, short stack revealed an A Q, and failed to pair to the river, putting me at the $10K mark. The rest of the game went quickly -- i got great cards, anted, blind stealers tried, and i took them all down, one-at-a-time each hand. The last guy took about ten more minutes, because I limited him to $2-3K, then waited until I had a better than 50% challenge hand before calling or putting him all-in. He won the first three all-ins, but afterwards each time I just whittled him down with the blinds until he was in the same range. Wash, rinse, repeat. All the while, blinds kept going up, eventually eating him up. I finally killed him on the last all-in, and earned an $80 pot. The drought has stopped.

But that's not why I needed you. Afterwards, I thanked G for her sage advice, put her to sleep, then went to a $100K play money table, where this trash-talking, lotto whore bitch sat down and started bullying everyone. We exchanged words. She chat slammed me, but I beat her, earning up to $187K from my paltry $5K stake. Then the trash talking took its toll, and she suckered me into playing her game. Some other bastard took her side and chimed in on me. She claimed to have $140M in chips, and kept rebuying. After someone else beat me on her all-in hand that I called, she took the rest of mine on the next all-in hand. Then she lost it all on the next hand and left the table. Her handle is debbievp.

I'd like to employ the services of lvlottopoker and icetee to get her. R u in?

Regards,

G-man