HIATUS INTERRUPTUS

I began July in an 0-18 funk. Nothing was going right and I couldn't get past the bubble. I could get close to the money on occasion, but something always came up to knock me out of contention. I was in the hole around $1400, although I had won $245 in my only ring game of the month. My brother's family came to town July 10th, which is just when I was due for a good break from poker. Taking time off is a great way to stop the bleeding and get the head on straight for the inevitable return.

We had an action-packed week which began with a couple days of swimming and catching up, then we went to Disneyland's California Adventure for half a day and drove on to our older brother's empty house in San Diego county. The older brother, Steve, as you will recall, now works in Woodland Hills, so I see him all the time. He is transitioning from his rental house in Encinitas, and E and I were able to bunk there for a couple of days. We enjoyed a full day at Legoland, using Steve's passes, and then the next day, we spent several hours at Disneyland on our way back to my place. Lots of fun, deeply discounted. Legoland cost us nothing thanks to the surprise passes waiting for us. Disneyland cost us nothing as I am the spouse of an executive. Lots of high dollar excitement without straining the budget.

My birthday was Sunday, July 16th, and although my wish would have been to play poker all day, we instead spent the day at Zuma beach with a few other families. I still get a kick out of that drive thru the Santa Monica Mountains. You wind your way up, up, up, then down, down, down, and the mountains part before you and there is the Pacific Ocean. Sometimes, in the early morning, you drive thru clouds during the up, ups. We stayed several hours. The kids played in the giant sandbox while I tossed the pigskin around with some of my buddies. I tried to fly a kite for the first time in my life, but it kept finding the ground.

My friends got me a great clock for my backyard with temperature and humidity readings. I had mentioned months ago that I will need a poolside clock, so it was a thoughtful gift. E got me four books from Amazon corresponding to four of my major interests: baseball, poker, UFOs, and quantum physics. I've read a little of Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Blunders, which is fun. I like reading about baseball circa 1908. It gets to the modern day stories later, but I like the old stuff because baseball has been around for such a long time and I can easily get into the mind of figures from other eras since I am such a fan myself. I have seen baseball go through *eras* since I became a fan in the late 1970s, but despite the changes in the game, it is still baseball, and it wasn't much different 100 years ago.

The differences are intriguing - the innings logged by starting pitchers for instance. How different the management of a pitching staff has become, but beneath all the changes, you still have guys trying to score runs alternating with those same guys trying to prevent runs. Since the advent of divisional races corresponds with my 1969 birth year, and I have never known otherwise, it is especially interesting to get into the minutae of pennant races back in the day when there was only one winner who then proceeded to the World Series. How different that has become with wild card teams taking the pennant every other season. You don't even need much of a team anymore through June, so long as you bring up the prospects and make a few trades and build a team that can squeak into the postseason and play good ball in September/October. But I digress as the scotch takes effect.

I am also half way thru Scott Fischman's new book, Online Ace. I am really enjoying it. I was put off by Fischman the first time I saw him on ESPN sucking out on gentleman Joe Awada. Joe was so class while Scott was too busy high-fiving the rail to shake Awada's hand. Then when the dream came true, Fischman leaned backwards onto the table which is just about the opposite of humbly accepting victory when luck was the deciding factor. I came to really respect Joe Awada, though I never got to engage him in last year's WSOP as we sat together, since I busted out so soon. Fischman is a bit cocksure, but the guy is a hell of a player and I don't mind learning from him.

Yesterday, I took Fischman's STT strategy into a game. I decided that I wasn't going to get involved in any hands early on unless I had the goods or fantastic drawing odds. I joined a $100 table and went about waiting for the goods. Things were going well, until I overplayed AQ and busted out. I reraised all-in on a ragged flop and got called by AK. It was a good lesson, because the strategy told me to fold in that spot, but I tried to make a play and wound up going broke. I'm kind of glad it came down that way since I was testing the strategy and was given a clear indication that my way was folly. I played another $100 STT and this time I made it to heads up with a tremendous lead, just as Fischman told me I would. I was a card away from winning the table, but a jack on the river saved my opponent, who then went on a tear and pulled even. We ended up chopping for $360 each. I think I am going to play more STTs in the months ahead, since I had largely abandoned them and they could wind up being a source of steady profit if I play the Fischman method.

Next, I played some heads up. I lost the first $100 match on a suckout. Then, I played a four-player heads-up match, with the winner taking $400 after vanquishing two opponents. In the first match, I got to the final table and played well, but again succumbed to the suckout when I was outchipped. I played again and won the $400. I began to think about the possible permutations of the four-player heads-up battle. Assuming equal skill amongst all four players, and with luck tending to even out over time, if we assume that each individual match's winner can be determined by a coin flip, then there are only three ways the event can come down: either I lose the first match, or I win that match and lose the second match, or I win them both. The math tells me that for every $327 invested (including vigorish), I will win $400, and that assumes equal skill. Since I am actually pretty good at heads-up play, my results might be even better. My left brain tells me I should play more of these.

So, I wound up making a bit over $200 yesterday in these STT and HU events. Tonight, I decided I wanted to get back into a MTT with the fog cleared and my post-hiatus poker brain ready to go deep. I joined the $50 PokerRoom and $69 Full Tilt 8PM events. I was doing well in both, but wound up getting crippled in the PokerRoom event on the bubble, not due to bad play, but due to gremlins. I called a MP raise from the big blind with JJ. I figured I had the best hand, but since the raiser was a big stack, I didn't want to get into a pissing contest preflop. I figured any flop with no overcards was a flop I was comfortable playing for my entire stack. It came down 994 and I checked. He bet, but I just knew I had the best hand, so I came back with a raise. Full Tilt has a nice feature that brings the tournament window to the front when it is your turn to act, which happened at this time. I was involved in a heads-up hand that went all the way to the river. Over at PokerRoom, my opponent reraised me, but I just knew he was sitting on AK or a middle pair and my hand was good. I was ready to push my chips in the middle, but every time I tried to do so, the Full Tilt window took over. I wound up timing out and folding my JJ, which sucked because I know it was good. I even told him that I was trying to push but couldn't and he admitted that he was glad I didn't. So, that left me crippled, and soon after, I was out on the bubble. Another creative way to lose money.

Over at Full Tilt, I was still playing my A-game. I played very well and good things happened at good times and I made a small fortune in chips, propelling me to the final table in good shape. Top spot paid over $6k and I really wanted a piece of that. Top six spots paid over $1k and I was definitely going to get a piece of that. Things were going great, with three players already gone when I got the dreaded AQ. There was an UTG raise from a player whom I had covered. Six-handed, I gotta believe that AQ is a powerhouse hand, so I push all in with it. Right behind me, a player has AK and he makes the call. It was a bit of a ballsy call with two players making noise in front of him, but it was a good call. UTG folded and the other guy doubled up thru me, leaving me with less than $3k. I was lucky in that I managed to build up to $13k and outlasted one other player, earning an extra $500, before busting in 5th place for $1743.50. I'm very pleased with how I played. I like my A-game very much and I am hoping to see more of it in the months ahead. I'm not really upset with pushing with AQ in that spot. I think I just got very unlucky to run into AK behind me. I would probably be more upset if the original raiser had the AK. I'm happy with the profit, which erased the red ink and put me into the black for the month. More final tables to come, I think.

On a side note, all night I have been reading the updates at CardPlayer for the $1500 NL WSOP event. I originally checked it out because Carl Olson was playing. Well, he busted out in 80th place, but I saw that Chris "MarvinGarden" Birchby was still alive, so I have been reloading the updates for the past eight hours and moments ago, play finished for the day with nine players remaining and Chris sitting in third place going into tomorrow's final table. I know this guy and he can play poker like a-ringing a bell, which I think means pretty good, as that is how Johnny B Goode plays guitar. Pull for this guy. We want him to win a bracelet and the $655k that comes with it.