I'm Running Good

I always dread this time of year. The anticipation of the unknown coming upon me as I wait for the dawning of a new age puts me into a scattered mood. It is time for my review.

I’ve done a lot for the company in the last year but did I do enough to justify a good raise. Product optimization, quality investigation and sucking off the customer should be worth a little something in my honest opinion. If you look at the amount of travel I did last year, which was equal to about a month of my life, then I must be of some importance.

Well, after all was said and done I received a 2.5% raise. Not the biggest in the world but I can’t complain…well I could complain but I won’t because I like the place and we continue to expand. In the end I have to believe that any raise in this economy is a good raise.

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My oldest daughter is in The Pirates of Penzance, a musical being run by the drama department at her school. Her first performance was on Thursday with her finishing up on Monday afternoon. As someone who has been in musicals, I think they did a great job of pulling this off. A draw back was that Softball E didn’t get the part of Mabel because she is 6 inches taller then her counterpart and it wouldn’t have worked. Instead, she gets to sing some of Mabel’s parts because the girl who has that part doesn’t have the range to pull it off. I think it’s a great sign of her character that she did this without any fan fair. Maybe she can get a job with Milli Vanilli.

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After getting home from the Musical last night, I fired up the lap top and donked in a 6-max tourney and blew it when I forgot that low buy-in players don’t know how to fold. I flopped two pair with a flush draw on the board in a battle of the blinds. When the turn brought a 3rd heart I bet again and he called. A fourth heart came and I check raised him committing my stack with two pair that was no good but knowing he had a weak flush and should lay it down. He called with his weak 8 high flush and busted me.

So I jumped into a PLO tourney and looked down at AKTT double suited on the 2nd hand of the tourney. Five players saw the flop and I hit the joint when it comes down AQJ.

*** FLOP *** [Js As Qc]
Souperfly bets 540
Moikster has 15 seconds left to act
Moikster raises to 2,160
taggyo folds
adrian1300 has 15 seconds left to act
adrian1300 folds
pokerenthusiast has 15 seconds left to act

Now I have the best hand but I wasn’t sure how I wanted to play it. It is very early so do I just jam to try and isolate vs. calling and pricing in other players? If I call I am committed and I do have the best hand possible to this point so I jam.

pokerenthusiast raises to 2,880, and is all in
Souperfly calls 2,325, and is all in
Moikster calls 570, and is all in
pokerenthusiast shows [Kd Ah Td Th]
Souperfly shows [Jc Ac 5h 3c] – He has two outs
Moikster shows [Ad 7c Qs Qd] – He has one out.

Can I ask for a better situation…I don’t think so and I triple up right away.

I lost a few chips later with a set of jacks and the nut flush draw when my flush missed and my opponent had a set of kings. Later I was crippled when I lost a big hand vs. some guy who called me to the river with aces and sixes and hit his third 6 on the river vs. my flopped set. Down to 1200 chips I was in trouble. But, five hands later I was back to about 4K after a timely hand and on to 5K and almost back to par. The deck came back to me again an orbit later and I was over 7K.

Hello…is there anyone there…crap

My laptop crashed with some stupid stop error and I had to wait for it to reboot. Luckily everything came back ok and I only missed two or three hands.

Right away I double up with a set of 8s and move to 14K. I gave some back on a busted draw but doubled again to 20K with a boat vs. a straight. I moved to top 5 with a straight a bit later and started to think I was going deep. We are finally in the money a bit later and I hit a big hand to move to 40K. I’m playing very tight aggressive and trying to take advantage when I can. From here though I went a little card dead in that I wasn’t willing to commit to a pot with much of what I saw. Eventually we got to the final table bubble with me a the short stack as the chips flew around the table. I found AAxx and went with it and got called by QQJx. I flop a set but he has a gut draw. The turn is a blank and I have one bullet to avoid. A king hits the board and I am the bubble boy for the final table.

I played well so I can’t complain a whole lot.

I did have the pleasure of stacking the worst poker player ever in a PLO cash game so overall it was a great night.