♠ Sunday, July 24, 2005
I'm Even Dreaming about Bad Beats
In the midst of poor performance online, I've taken to dreaming about bad beats.
Oh, this isn't truly a bad-beat story, more like a bad-luck story, and it isn't real anyway. I'm playing in a room that looks like someone's library, and in my mind it's a tournament, but it doesn't have to be, we're simply heads-up. My opponent is middle-aged and skinny, not someone I recognize at all, which would tend to indicate that this is a tournament rather than someone's home game.
I have pocket Queens, and decide to limp in (this is a dream, remember). He points behind him, where all of his chips are sitting on a windowsill. That's a little odd, but we're headsup, so what the hell. His chips are the pale blue of the $1 chips at Soaring Eagle in Mt.Pleasant, which is also odd, but in a tournament, chips seem to be colored almost randomly once you get above the $100 denomination. Anyway, pointing to his chips seems to indicate he's all-in, so I call instantly, feeling like I trapped him, and he says, "Good." He then turns over pocket Kings.
That's why it's not really a bad-beat story; I'm behind the whole way. But I'm behind a whole lot more when the flop comes QKK, leaving me with a full house but still drawing dead. Of course, if this was a tournament, second place would still pay me a goodly sum, but that part isn't in my dream.
And, in the Real World ...
I've been so close at Noble Poker. I've run my online stake as high as $970, which is really damned close to the $1000–$1200 I said I'd need to head west. But then the cards started turning against me, or I stopped playing with confidence, or something; I started heading south, and have been below $200 a couple of times. I'm now at about $300, and I'm a little shell-shocked. I may play a tournament or two tonight but overall I think I need to take a break from poker for a day or two, get my confidence back.
I've got to be close to working off my deposit bonus at Noble by now, which makes my decline all the worse: I'd be broke now if it weren't for the bonus. But after it's worked off I'll probably head back to Party, or maybe a skin if there's a good bonus (I've used BONUSJUL already), merely on the basis of game selection: I want more than one or two games at a particular limit. And I've never had trouble running up a bankroll at Party's $25NL, at least not in the last few months, so my confidence should be there.
I've been "two weeks away" from moving west for almost a month now. And now I still find myself two weeks away. Wow, I've invented a time machine!
