poker? poke me.

poker update: game 4 — bought in: $60, down $45, total for the year: -$104

Not a result I'm happy about, but I'm not really that unhappy with how I played last night. About ninety minutes into the eveing I made a couple of fairly big, incorrect calls (both to Paul) which wiped out the rest of my first $30 buy-in. The hand afterwards, however, I flopped the nut flush and, as luck would have it, ended up heads up against Paul again. I acted my way through the hand, cursing him and betting like I was on tilt until the river when I raised him (and his straight) and took down a good sized pot — probably half of what I'd lost to him.

After that, I stayed pretty even. I didn't get a lot of cards, and when I did I couldn't get a lot of players (I got AA three times last night and never made it to a showdown). Well, I stayed pretty even until the end of the night when Reggie went on a tear and took about $25 from both me and Jon in the space of about half an hour. He made quads, flopped a boat, pulled nut flushes (against my top two pair), etc. I'm not sure that I could have gotten away from any of those hands against him. I had good hands, but they ended up being second best every time. It was ugly. All you could do was laugh. And give him all your chips.

So, basically, I had another night where the cards didn't help me much. Still, I played solid (mostly). If I'd made one or two decisions differently... I'd probably still be down, thanks to Reggie's unbelievable cards at the end, but not by as much.

I didn't "wussy bet" very much — a good thing — I only once made a short bet, when I could have tried to push someone out, and Jamie said that it didn't matter, that he would have called anything. So, I came out losing less money than I should have on that hand.

And I made some good folds and calls. Still, I'd like to win some money sometime soon, if that's okay. Poker gods, are you listening?