50 minutes of poker

Over the last 5-6 days I have had a really bad itch to play poker. I cannot remember the last time I had this much drive to play poker. I do not know why this is but the greater my itch becomes the more confident I feel in my abilities to come all the way back and then some.

It's not to say that I spend all day thinking about poker because that is not the case. I generally don't think about poker at all. I have random intervals throughout the day when poker is on my mind. It might be an hour at a time but during that hour the only thing that I can think of is poker. During these short intervals I think of my next plan of attack and almost fantasize if you can say about what I think is going to happen.

About 3 different times during the last 10 days I have come to the conclusion that I was going to go play. Each time I was unable to easily acquire funds with which to play with. I have had the funds to play for a while but it is money that I should not be using.

Whenever I start making money, I always start emergency funds. As of right now, I am down to my last 2 emergency funds. I have $600 sitting in my savings account and I have another $210 in loose change. Just earlier today I withdrew the $600. The last $200 is meant to go back in the bank to cover the $600 if I go on to lose it.

As degenerative as this may sound let me defend myself for a moment. The only reason why I pulled the $600 out of the bank is because today I secured an interview for a job. The person who is going to interview me tomorrow is none other then my friend Hale. It's a group interview and he has told me that the interivew has been fixed before it has even started. He can't really guarantee anything however he told me that he is going to get me in. He is a manager at a California Pizza Kitchen in Pasadena and he is going to get me a job waiting tables. Sounds like fun doesn't it? Not really if you ask me. I really don't want to wait tables however I am glad to be getting back into the restaurant industry and if I am going to have a boss, I may as well have it be a friend of mine who happens to be really easy going. He told me that when I get in, I will probably start within a week and we get paid during traning. I figure I will have a couple weeks to make money before anymore major bills are due in the event that I lose the $600.

Another reason why I chose today is because I feel myself getting back into the swing of things. For a long while, I was keeping a schedule that is not friendly with my lifestyle. This is partially due to the fact that I stayed with my parents for 6 weeks and the fact that I have had things to do in the morning since I have moved into my new place. Only for the last week or so I have had no real reason to wake up early in the morning. That is really nice. Even though I haven't played poker, I am starting to get back into my poker schedule. The current hours that I am starting to keep are ranging from 1:00 pm-4:00 am. This is by far my favorite sleep schedule to keep. If I get the job, that will probably change because I will probably be starting my shifts before 1:00 in the afternoon. Obviously I have a little time before we know if this is for sure or not.

Since my last poker session which took place at the very end of February, I have been plotting my new plan of attack. I am going to take 3 shots and whatever happens happens. I call it the $200-$400-$600 challenge. It's quite simple. Play the $200. Come up, buy into the $400, come up huge, and then take all the winnings and put it in the no max buyin game and let it ride. I have two goals in doing this. The first is I want to have my first ever $5000 day playing live poker which I think is very doable if things go my way for once. The second goal is to win over $7600 because that would be the most money I have made playing poker in one day.

Today I took my first of 3 shots and the same standard things happened.

We started a new $200 table and I was dealt pocket 5's on the very first hand. The guy to my right raised to $20 and I was the only caller. I didn't flop my set and it went check check on the flop and I folded on the turn to the raisers bet. I am down to $180. I get chipped away a little bit and am down to about $150-$155.

I pick up A 5 spades and limp the button after several other limpers. I don't like my limp but we are all playing short so seeing cheap flops is good at this point.

I flopped the nut flush draw and there is a $20 bet on the flop. Flop: 10 8 6

There is one call, I call, and there is one more caller. It would be really nice to hit this one this one time.

Turn J Flush misses.

The original bettor checks and this fish bets only $30. I wanted to call really bad but knew that if I called it would be a bad call since someone can check-raise big. I called hoping that no one would raise and luckily only got one more caller.

River. Q Flush misses.

Both players check and I have a decision to make. The only player that I am really worried about is the other guy who has been calling bets. I have played with him quite a bit and he is a good player. Not only that, but I have a terrible table image against him. I am not worried at all about the fish. Like I said it checked to me and I threw out a $75 bet. I think I had about $105 left but I thought $75 was a nice value bet and thought that an all-in was more likely to get called. The guy that I was worried about folds immediately and the fish thinks about it for a minute. The fish looks down at his cards and kind of chuckles under his breath and I now know he is going to fold. After deliberating for a minute he finally folds and I take a nice pot. After counting my chips I had exactly $300 in front of me and was right on target. I dropped about $50 or so and then flopped an Ace with a weak kicker on an A Q J board and took it down on the flop which brought me back up to $280. I then started getting a bunch of pocket pairs with the highest being 8 8. Every time I had a pocket pair there was a raise and I missed the flop each time. I saw the flop on each pocket pair except for one.

We are 50 minutes in and I still have not made a hand except for the one time I flopped an Ace.

I am down to $230 and picked up 9 10 of clubs in the BB and saw a flop in an unraised pot.

Flop 4 6 7 all clubs.

I have finally made a hand. I bet out $20 and I get one caller.

Turn 9 hearts.

I bet $60 and the guy who has me covered goes all in.

I can't imagine folding as there are more holdings that he can have that I am beating then are beating me. I obviously call off my last $140 and he shows J 3 of clubs. Standard.

This one was like most ever other session I play except I would say I played better then I usually have been. However I have had the same result each time. I never make a hand and the one time I do I lose all my money. Therein lies the problem. You can't ever fold in the $200 when you make a big hand. That's why I want to start playing in the uncapped game. If I had $1200 left and had a decision for all my chips I can see myself possibly laying that hand down. However with only $140 its pretty tough to fold a flopped 10 high flush.

I have my interview tomorrow and depending on how that goes I will take shot #2 tomorrow night. Since my big upswing of 3 wins in a row, I have lost 8 of my last 9 and have lost 6 straight. That is a $2000 downswing since my $1200 upswing.

I never ask to actually get lucky however picking up a couple hands and not getting extremely unlucky should not be a lot to ask for but it obviously is. I am still waiting for my first pocket Aces in over 50 hours.