APRIL 14, 2008

Monday morning, I dove into a slew of O8 games. I know I should be playing NLHE and trying to win some money but my rogue nature usually wins out and I spend my day playing rather than working. I was $1400 invested and finished with $1514 for a small profit. I played a couple of limit tables along with a pot-limit and a no-limit table concurrently. I bled money at the limit games but I did fairly well at the higher stakes games. They were not as wild as I would have figured. With your entire stack at risk on every hand, it is easier to muck the marginal hands and pick your spots more carefully. Everyone at the table had similar criteria for getting their money in. That tended to slow the game down for me and I was able to use my poker smarts to recognize some good spots rather than simply paying to chase like in the limit games.

Later that night, I got into a $5/10 Limit O8 game as if I knew what I was doing and I bled $400 in short order. I switched to NLHE and recouped $120 of it. There would have been $260 additional if not for the Painful Elimination of the Day:

I had Qd-Qc and the big blind called my raise. It came 6d-5d-3s and he bet into me and I raised him. He called and the turn was the 8d. He checked, I went all in for a large amount. He studied and found a call with 6s-2c. The river was a 4 - he took the $260 and took off. After a fix like that, I'm willing to bet he has not played his last hand of poker. I'd like to think he cashed out and invested it in something safe.