A Real Aquarium

Lt. Frank Drebin: Congratulations, Ed! I hear Edna's pregnant again.
Ed Hocken: Yeah, and when I find the guy that did it...

"Naked Gun 2½ - The Smell Of Fear"

I had a bit of a poker binge over the weekend, with the expected terrible results that come with a poker binge after a long layoff. I dropped 3 buy-ins one late night, and then worked hard to get nearly a full one back the next day. While all this was going on, I also decided to jump into a MTT for the first time in a long time. I went ok, finished 11 th for a very small score but had fun along the way. I needed one suck-out to stay alive but otherwise I made moves when the time was right and my big pairs held up other times. For the most part I was folding and waiting – when the Distraction came home and we had somewhere else to go, so I through it all in with KQ and got called by AQ. Though I'm not disappointed, it was a bit of fun and kept me occupied for a while.

After a few quick sessions last night, I have managed to crawl back to even at UB, after being up nearly 33% on the initial buy in and then down about 25%. I'm happy enough with that since I am really just there to grind out the PSO bonus – of which they have plenty of new ones that will keep me busy over the coming months.

I am finding that I can adjust my play now to the type of players at the table. While I do not know many of them, the time of day is very indicative of the style of player, or at least it is feeling that way at the moment. After going on the mini-tilt earlier in the week I have been able to play some solid poker. I had a great little play on a hand where I missed my straight, but the river brought a flush. Heads up, I put my opponent at vulnerable to the flush draw and made what I thought looked like a value bet on the river. He made a tough laydown, as that card also hit him for three of a kind, but I congratulated him on a good laydown and indulged him by saying I had a full house.

Later, on a different table I didn't bluff but made the right plays against the massive stack at the table with pocket pairs both times. No bad beats or bluffs, just betting the right amount at the right time so all was good. I was happy to get back to even.

I have been reviewing my poker results through a spreadsheet I use, comparing this year to last and I surprised myself to find I am up on both per hour earning and, more importantly, overall profit. It's nice to keep track of these things, only for live games though as I don't have Poker Tracker or any others of the commercial software available for this kind of thing.

The biggest addition to the household has been an aquarium, for the Distraction's birthday last week. It is amazing what has to happen to these things before you can actually put some fish in there. It will be another two weeks at least before we start with the cheapest fish available, just to see if we kill them or not before we start getting the ones we really want. After spending $90 buying a small tank on eBay, we got given a much larger one for free but fortunately the eBay one came with a tonne of extras that will make it worth while anyway.

And then I can watch the fish all day while bleeding them online.