Moving Onwards And Upwards

Connor, Murphy: And Shepherds we shall be For thee, my Lord, for thee. Power hath descended forth from Thy hand Our feet may swiftly carry out Thy commands. So we shall flow a river forth to Thee And teeming with souls shall it ever be. In Nomeni Patri Et Fili
[Guns cocks]
Connor, Murphy: Spiritus Sancti.

"Boondock Saints"

It has been a very busy time at the Poker On Film household. After looking for a month or so for a new place to live, to accommodate the pending increase in our family size, we've spent most weekends driving around greater Sydney looking at places with hosts of other families. This means we usually pull up about 10 minutes before the open house, and 15-20 minutes before the real estate agent, and start sizing up the competition – those guys look like they'll have a lot of parties and trash the place…that lady looks drunk already (it was 10am)…damn, that woman looks way more pregnant than the Distraction here…those kids look illegitimate…and so on.

We found a nice place and put in an application, which is never a sure thing anyway, only to be told that the owners would want us out in 6 months. Would have been nice to know that in advance. Never mind – another place we saw a week ago was still available, and we thought we would try it again, but this time it would be someone else's application that would be approved.

Every other time we have moved places for whatever reason, we've found a place straight away. Last time, we had just one day to fins a place after we returned from our honeymoon. This time around, we gave ourselves months of notice so we could truly find a suitable place – and this time we needed it because the market is so competitive. As luck would have it, the very first place we saw was the best but we did not put in an application because we wanted to see what else was out there. By the time we realised it didn't get any better than that, we were too late. Never mind.

So anyway, last weekend we checked out 4 places, and put in applications for three of them. The forms for the applications are really stupid – how many different things you need to include, and referees and the like, and then to check on us all they did was call our "next of kin" – which for both of us was our mothers! Surprise surprise, our mum's think we are good people and we got approved for all three places. So anyway, now we have our pick and selected the new home for Little Ed when he or she joins us in April.

Along with some illness, I haven't played much poker since the last all-in fest which was not enjoyable, and time to get online has been limited. I did have a quick 30 minute session on Sunday, sitting down at the $1/$2 NL table to the immediate left of a massive chip leader. I never seem to be in good position, so getting him in position seemed like a good sign for me and I was ready to let it ride. This was a new level for me, and I figured I would either make back some of my recent losses or get a hiding and remind myself that I don't belong here. I bought it short for about $130.

Early hands, I couldn't protect TPTL against a flush draw, but got out without loosing my skin. Down to about $90 when I get pocket aces on the small blind. All my interesting hands seem to come from the blinds…Anyway, as everyone had folded, and the button made a raise to $6 I decided it was already a thinned field, I could hide my hand a little with just a call here. BB also called and the flop comes Ten high – I check, BB checks, button bets $15. This is enough, and I push all-in. Only the button calls with AT – which is really a bit of a bad situation to be in hitting TPTK when someone has slow played an over pair, but you could argue for and against dropping it there. An ace on the river might have given him hope, because at PokerStars you don't see the cards until the hand is completed, but anyway I managed a double up. A few hands later, I see a flop with AJh and four others, including our still massive stack to my right on the BB, and the flop comes A62 with only one heart. I checked, just to see what action was out there and one player makes a $6 bet. Our friend in the big blind raised it to $16, and I thought I was behind but might call just to see if I could catch up or to see what he does on the next card. Original better leaves and we are heads up again. Turn is a Jack, which means I am either buried to a set or just got lucky. He bets $25, and I consider myself pretty much committed here, but just call (may have been a mistake there again, but that's what happened.) The river was a ten, meaning KQ would have hit a gut shot straight but if so, good luck to him. He pushed all-in again and obviously has me well covered, so I felt I had a good enough hand to call and hoped he had AK or AQ. Turns out he has 62o for the flopped two pair, and I am good for a second double up. I now have him covered too.

On the first double up, it was just a good situation for me and it probably wouldn't have mattered how I played it (save for only calling pre-flop), it was just the kind of flop that got him interested enough to call my shorter stack all in. The second time, well I got a bit of luck but it wasn't like he was playing a monster hand – perhaps he had me on a draw or a weaker Ace – which I did have before the turn – and perhaps the earlier loss also had a little tile effect on him. So good situation and a bit of good luck – hopefully some good play in there as well and I'm looking at a good day.

Not once did this guy though go off about what a donkey I was or how rigged the site was, which seems to be just as common as ever when someone looses a hand. Got to give him that, he'd just dropped nearly $300 to me and didn't feel that need.

A few hands later, when I was feeling like I should be cutting and running, I saw an un-raised flop with Ah3h – and the flop was all hearts! I let someone else bet and just called, and saw a fourth heart on the turn. I hoped the other player, a different person this time, had just the king or queen and had hit their flush, but in case they had something else I check-raised them all-in for the remaining chips, maybe $80. He called with just the ten of hearts, and was drawing dead. I stood up soon afterwards, and had turned the $130 into $450 by the end of the game, my best online session in a very long, long time.