February can go to hell.

I actually have several pieces of good news along with a little piece of bad news.

So I spoke to my attorney and he shouted at me the way he always does. Don't worry, that's normal for him. He told me that it's all bullshit and not worry about anything and that he has me covered. I don't really know what that means but hopefully he comes through.

I saw the landlord yesterday and my apartment is finished! I went and rented a truck and will be moving in tomorrow morning. I am absolutely ecstatic. With that and my car payment I just spent $1300 today. That hurts.

So as you can imagine, I was in a really good mood today and went to Commerce hoping that it would translate into a big day. I was wrong. I sat down in the $200 and played much more disciplined then I usually do. On only the second hand of sitting down I was already put to the test for my entire stack. Standard.

There was a $20 raise and I picked up J J in my favorite position. The SB. I win this pot if I re-pop but my hand is too vulnerable so I just call.

There is the typical crazy/wild Middle Eastern (ME) player at my table. On the previous hand, he had A K, raised pre-flop and never once attempted to bluff at it.

The flop on the jacks hand came down 10 8 7 with two hearts. I checked, the initial raiser checked and our ME player bets out $75 which is a slight over-bet. I spend a good minute and a half thinking about it, mulling over what his possible holdings are. I basically come to the conclusion that he is not bluffing since he didn't bluff the last hand. It's now just a matter of how strong he really was.

I show the guy sitting next to me my jacks and I muck. The other guy mucks as well. The ME player asked me what I had and I told him and he verified with the guy I showed and he shit all over himself. He said I made a very good lay-down although he never told me what he had.

I continually got chipped away as I was getting nothing to play with. I don't know why this happens almost every day that I play but it does. Not only that, but this whole month has been the same every session. I get nothing the entire time, and then I'll randomly flop quads with a pocket pair or I'll flop a nut-flush. Other then that, my cards are doing nothing to help me.

I picked up a lot of my favorite hands but elected not to play any of them because I was already short-stacked. Luckily those hands ran cold for me as none of them even came close to hitting. I won one pot where I flopped an Ace and won like $12. I flopped an Ace again and had to lay it down and was right when the girl who bet me out of the pot showed an A 10 against my A 8. I only made 1 play the entire time and of course it backfired. It folded to me in the CO and I raised to $20 with Q J trying to steal blinds. The BB calls me with J 8 and of course flops trips 8's. Flop: 8 8 5. I bet out $30 and he calls. I assume he either has a pocket pair or is floating. An Ace hit the turn and I go all-in hoping that he will fold. He calls and shows his trips and I'm off the table in less then hour. I walk around for a minute trying to figure out why good things are rarely ever happening to me anymore when I play poker.

It was 10 minutes before 5 and I didn't want to sit in traffic plus I wasn't satisfied with my result. For some reason I went and bought into a $100 NL game. I have never booked a win in this game. Before this session I had clocked in 11.5 hours and am down $964. In the $200 game, I'm up $7700 and in the $400 I'm up $10,700. I would like an explanation for that one.

Before my session on the $100 table today I have played 40.4 hours of poker in February and am down exactly $1. That's right $1. I am losing $.02 an hour playing poker. Please just let me die if this is how its going to be.

I sat in the $100 and felt like the tightest player in the world. I never got anything to play with. I cannot recall the last time I had Aces. I won only two hands the whole time and came up $91. That puts me up $90 for the month. I almost jumped back into the $200 but I decided against it, because I really can't take a $300 loss today so instead I played it safe and only took a $109 loss.

I am back down to the original ATM money that I pulled out a week or so ago. Most of the winnings from that went into the bank to cover bills/rent/expenses so I am skating pretty thin right now. Now, would be a really nice time to go on a 20 buy-in upswing.

Take care.

-Gary