Hella Hold'em

Thanks to everybody who commented on my last post, and my apologies for the delay in responding. My net connection has been flaky for 3 days now (more on that later). It's still not working quite right...

1. Human Head used his noggin and nailed my "frustration motivation" right on the foot (because on the head would not make sense, if a Head is doing the nailing):

I think what is getting to you is all of the potential money you see being thrown around on the table that isn't being pushed your way when it "rightfully" should be."

Arg!! Yes!! That's it!! Thanks for articulating it for me, Head. I'm not proud to feel that way, but in a nutshell, that's it. The five year old in me is stomping her feet and pouting. I read all the books. I take notes. I talk about poker with people. I keep statistics. I analyze my hand histories. I set goals. And these donkeys sit down, get blasted drunk, play like morons, and take down huge pots they don't deserve. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

I'm done crying now. Guess I had to get that out of my system! Also - FYI for Head (since he asked) - Trump spreads only 3/6 and 6/12 in the limit hold'em arena. That's it. There are a couple other casinos around that spread 5/10 as their lowest and/or only game. I haven't tried them yet, but hear they are fish-o-licious, which would indicate the same level of play I'm seeing at 3/6.

2. SSHE.... great book. I own it and have read it twice, most recently right before I went to Vegas (so, about a month ago). You're all right, though. I need to pull it out and maybe dig through it again with a specific intent on minimizing my losses to suckouts and maximizing profits on others' mistakes. I know for a fact I'm losing a few bets by not raising my draws and things of that nature. I need to solidify those sorts of technicalities in my game and commit them both to memory and to practice.

The low limit hold'em book (Jones, was it?) was out of stock at my local Borders bookstore. It's one I haven't read yet. I will get it and read it and absorb it.

I also took Pauly's advice and read HDouble's take on Morton's Theorum. And the skies parted as words sang down from the heavens... This plays right into the fact that I too often don't capitalize on my monster draws. Since this is all one big long session, my stomach turns to think of how much all of those missed bets add up to. And of course, being one who subscribes to the math of all this, maybe it could take some sting out of the suckouts to remember that AA may be a preflop favorite to win against 1 opponent, but against 3 or 4 is practically a race. (I can't seem to find the exact number, but I've read that somewhere).

3. Posted by Beck:

In other words, those donkeys who are pulling random ass two pair/trips hands out on the river all the time are quite likely making correct calls. So embrace the donkey. Be the donkey. And you will beat the donkey."

ROFL!!! That one made my day. In all seriousness, though - the SSHE opened my eyes to the exact concept you're describing. I used to throw away hands thinking 2nd pair was no good, because I hadn't even thought beyond the fact that I actually may have had 5 or 6 outs to a winning hand - and in those huge pots, it's often statistically an automatic call - at least to see the turn (sometimes even the river, with gigantic pots). I'll never forget the first time I was in a pot at 3/6 where I literally had odds to call a 2-outer on the river. That's a sick huge pot.

One of my key phrases in my head is, "In limit hold'em, it's all about the odds, baby." Not that NL ignores pot odds and implied odds - but it seems that the math can more often be a fallback decision maker in limit than in NL, because - well, it's limit. You're never making a bet or call for all of your chips. The structure removes some of the overriding factors that make odds a bit trickier to abide by in NL.

I think I need to make a refocused effort to concentrate on the math, in EVERY hand I play (and not just the obvious draws).

4. DonkeyPuncher - I'll be heading to Trump tonight. Hopefully I won't miss ya! I'll wear a Flyers jersey. Your name just now made sense to me. Yeah, I'm a bit slow. Punching donkeys. LOL! That's what I wanted to do the other night :)

5. Billy at Hammerlover - thanks for reading! I'll link ya up as soon as I finish this post. And a shoutout to Mr. Carson, too.

6. Baz - I thank you for your support! LOL. We'll catch up at Trump one of these days!

7. To the Princess... if you'd ever care to slum it down in 3/6 for a day, I'd gladly watch and soak up all of your expertise :)

8. Maudie - thanks for the encouragement. It means a lot to me, as I see you as someone who has worked up through the ranks and made her name the hard way - grinding it out and earning every cent. I have such huge respect for that, and aspire to do the same! I'll never be as good of a storyteller as you are, though.

9. Last but not least... Drizz - I'll see ya in Vegas! And bring pics of the munchkin!

Anyhoooo.... Thanks again everybody who commented (and those who silently empathized, or called me names). The poker jungle sure isn't the easiest one in the world to navigate, and whenever something is tied to money, there tend to be moments when emotions get involved (as much as I'd rather that not be the case). I appreciate you all allowing me to vent and giving me much food for thought. I promise to work hard to eat that food and turn it into profits :)

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Random other thoughts: I'm bummed to keep missing all of the online blogger tourneys lately, but I work nights Mon-Thurs, so I'm not available. I think I'm missing one right now actually, but I woke up too late to get in. :( Such is life...

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And... about my internet connection. Any networking gurus out there (Eva?), feel free to reply. I've tried everything I can think of.

A few days ago, Randy came to me and told me that he had messed up our network somehow by installing Azereus, a bit torrent client. (This may be completely coincidental and unrelated to the problem). It sucked up huge CPU/memory resources on his machine, so he uninstalled it. Since then, though, every computer on our network is experiencing frequent "connection timed out" errors when browsing the web. Non-web-based internet access, however, seems unaffected (ie. I can still play on Party Poker and Full Tilt Poker with no problems). Yesterday, I could hardly do anything online. Today, the time-outs are spotty and random. Refreshing a page 2 or 3 times seems to do the trick to get it to connect. When things DO connect, they do so perfectly - full speed ahead, no bandwidth issues. This problem occurs in both Firefox (my primary browser - I'm using version 1.5 RC2) and in Internet Explorer, so I don't think the problem is browser based. It happens on all 3 computers on the network.

All 3 machines are wirelessly connected using 802.11g and WPA security on a Linksys router, which exits through a Toshiba cable modem to Comcast. All are running Windows XP Pro with SP2. All 3 machines are getting good signal quality.

Things I've tried:

• Updated the router's firmware, which coincidentally had a fix for a WPA security issue. Glad I did that.
  
• Checked for Comcast outages in my area. None have been reported, though that doesn't really mean anything. When Comcast screws up in this area, it's usually huge.
  
• Ran spyware and virus scans on all machines (clean).
  
• Tried disabling firewall and antivirus/worm checking to see if either were blocking traffic. No effect.
  
• Cleared cache and cookies in the browsers.
  
• Power-cycled the cable modem and router.
  
• Rebooted all computers.
  

The fact that yesterday was awful and today is a bit better makes me think that the problem is with Comcast, despite them insisting on there being no problems in my area. Here's another thing:

If I hop off of my own wireless network and jump on my neighbor's network (they have satellite internet and not Comcast), things work fine. That makes me think that the problem lies in Comcast somehow. Take this as a tip, too - don't leave your wireless network with the default settings. Anybody in range can hijack your connection and steal your bandwidth.

Usually, when Comcast craps out, it's their DNS servers going all whack. I have my DNS servers hard-coded to non-Comcast servers for this reason. This time, though - it's not a DNS issue. I can't access web sites via domain name OR IP address.

Anyhooo... if this is a Comcast issue, then I'll just have to wait till it starts working again. Anyone else in Chicagoland having similar troubles on Comcast this weekend?

If anyone has any other suggestions I can try, in terms of fixing this or troubleshooting the problem, please comment :)

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I suppose I should stop rambling now. Time to grab some lunch and head over to Trump!