Tao of Poker

Sedentary

By Pauly
Hollyweird, CA

Earthquakes and the beach. I'll take it over degenerate gamblers and scorpions.

I spent a full week in Los Angeles and returned to a life of normalcy. Sort of. If I do something for two or three days in a row, it's a routine. More than that? Then it becomes normal. A life of normalcy. Back to writing and working on my side projects (such as Coventry and Truckin') while spending random time playing online poker, despite a minor tremor on Tuesday and a trip to Zuma Beach in Malibu on Wednesday.

The ebbs and flows of online poker. It had been a couple of months since I played every day for a week. Over the first two or three days, I really missed online poker, especially the ecstatic thrill of winning a nice sized pot in a cash game. I forgot that exhilarating feeling the most. What I didn't miss were all the shitwads and the swarm of negativity from the menagerie of sore losers.

My online play over the last week has been divided between on PokerStars and Full Tilt. I play primarily SNGs on PokerStars and stick to the cash games on Full Tilt.

I dabbled in NL games before the WSOP began, but since it ended, I have been multi-tabling limit hold'em tables with an occasional limit Stud table. I like playing three LHE tables and one Stud. Four at once. I've done five, but I feel that I'm at my optimum at four.

Depending on the time of day, multi-tabling LHE and Stud are generating double points because of Full Tilt's Happy Hour promotion. The tables I play always tend to fulfill the Happy Hour requirement of a limit table or a full ring table. You can take advantage of the "late night" Happy Hour (11pm to 1am ET) if you live on the West Coast since it's not as late and at the perfect time for me to play. Since I'm up at odd times, I caught the early morning Happy Hour a couple of times at 6am to 8pm ET.

PokerStars had been running their 2x promotion where you get double FPP points. I have been participating in the Battle of the Planets on PokerStars, an SNG promotion where their tier your level of play based on the planets in our solar system. I had been playing in the Neptune and Uranus category over the last couple of days.

My new addiction is PLO Trubo SNGs. Holy shit. Talk about addictive. Playing PLO turbos is similar to smoking crack dipped in chocolate and wrapped in bacon.

The one I played last night? I had a massive lead at the start of the third level with almost 6K in chips. I busted three players and we were on the money bubble with four to go... at the start of the third level. Talk about heavy action. Of course, I bled chips and pissed away the lead. I flopped quad Queens but couldn't get paid off. I eventually finished in third place.

Any Weeds fans out there? The writer(s) must be huge poker fans because there have been several poker references during recent episodes. The funniest one involved Albert Brooks character, a shady degenerate gambler who likes poker and the track. He was trying to shakedown his son's family by blackmailing them after they convinced him to kill his terminally ill mother. He wanted $10,000 transfered to his PokerStars account once a month. I watched that episode with Change100 and we both looked at each other and said, "Did he just say that?"

Speaking of Hollyweird, I played online poker with a couple of old friends who used to be regulars in the Murderers' Row home game in West LA. Both Shane Nickerson and the Poker Geek joined me at the 5/10 tables. Nickerson was in NYC on an assignment while the Geek was drying out in the adventure capital of the world... Iowa.

I lost a big pot when I turned a gutshot with 8-6o, but then I lost when my opponent rivered quad sevens. Nickerson also lost a big pot that was capped on the river. His Ace-high flush lost to a straight flush. I issued one wicked bad beat at that table. I cracked Queens with 6s-3s wen I flopped two pair.

* * * * * *
Maybe I haven't played online poker extensively for a while, but the banter at the tables has been extra venomous these days. I'm assuming that the increased level of agitation has everything to do with the recession and our state of economic turmoil. These are tough times we are living in with rising gas and food prices. All those bad beats add up. A tank of gas. A week of groceries. Either the barrage of bad beats are draining people's fuck-around money or making a dent into the bankrolls of the folks who had been playing poker for a living. Either way, tempers had been flaring. Fuses are super short these days.

I put a beat on one guy when my K-Q beat his A-9 during one SNG on Stars. Typical story. Four players and I raised from the button. He shoved from one of the blinds. I called, won the pot when a Queen fell, and my opponent flipped out.

Usually, I don't say anything. I ignore the chat. That's my general policy, especially when I'm multi-tabling because chatter is just a waste of time and energy. Depending on the situation during a cash game, I might egg on my anger opponent because my witty repartees can sometimes push them over the tilt cliff and they start spewing chips. And as Sun Tzu said, "If you opponent is angry... irritate them."

Here's something that has been driving the donkeyfish crazy. After I put a bad beat on them or suckout or get lucky or (this scenario is most likely) they misplay their hand and project the blame onto me instead of taking responsibility for their own actions, the feeble-minded ones take a cheap shot and call you something bad such as a donk or idiot.

Most of them write "your an idiot" or "your a f***** donkey" and that's when I quickly shoot back, "It's 'you are' or 'you're' and not your..."

That seems to tilt them even moreso.

Here's one example from a Stud table on Full Tilt over the weekend. I dunno the exact hand, but I outdrew my opponent. And then later on, I felted him. He refused to rebuy and sat there like a crybaby.

bigfattoad: suck shiit
DrPauly: nice comeback, sore loser
bigfattoad: fu coccck sucker
DrPauly: u must be harvard man
DrPauly: a true linguist
bigfattoad: no my father grandfather step grangfather uncles etc ALLL WERE
DrPauly: obviously u were adopted
bigfattoad: YOUR A DOUCHE BAG THATS GOT MORE MONEY THAN BRAINS
DrPauly: first off, it is "you are" or "you're"
bigfattoad: suck my balls women
DrPauly: rebuy
bigfattoad: blow me and i will
DrPauly: im not a homosexual, but it appears thats your tendency
bigfattoad: choke on it i hate you avitar
DrPauly: so full of hate and rage
bigfattoad: your a women no man would ever correct grammer unless he is a fuucin @#$ or an english teacher!
bigfattoad: your a women
DrPauly: not only are you a bad poker player with bad grammar, you have no clue
bigfattoad: and everyone knows women cant play poker
bigfattoad: lick me and die
DrPauly: stay classy. have a nice day

And of course my favorite zinger of the last week was when I missed a flush and backdoored trips. I took a big pot from one guy who typed, "F.ucking fish on here is unbelieveable." To which I responded, "The truth hurts, doesn't it?"


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