Too (Sick) To Call

If you can’t win at cards, might as well bet on the ponies.

After spending the majority of the weekend wrapped up tight with my good friends Nyquil and Sudafed. I’m back at work today hoping that no one approaches me with any questions that require a two syllable answer. Ever felt that way at work, just wanting to sit down at your desk with the cute pictures of your loved ones staring at you and putting a hex on anyone who even breathes towards your cube?

Normally, I love answering questions due to my rather solemn job description that has me buried beneath mountains of ledgers and receipts. Unfortunately block print doesn’t contain cool pictures and jokes. Being from a customer service background, I’d rather be helping people then sorting out debits and credits.

Not today.

Today is “let Drizz work or I’ll puke like that pie eating contest scene from Stand by Me”. (Hi Wil!!) I used to pride myself on working regardless of how I felt, but I now I realize what’s the point of dragging on an illness for a few bucks? Not to mention becoming that annoying guy in the other cube who coughs and sneezes till want to jump over the cube wall and encase him in saran wrap.

Enough about being sick since just about everyone has had to deal with this damn flu/cold/evian bird epidemic/plague/hangnail/compound fracture illness and I should stop whining.

Steelers vs. Seachickens? I should have had Little Drizz pick the winners again, or picked the teams who showed the most heart. No refs bungling up calls, no whiny perennial All-Pro quarterbacks getting more face time then they deserved. Just flat out domination on both sides of the ball for two well deserved teams. Anyone betting on Kobe vs. the final score of the Super Bowl? If you haven’t heard about his 81 point game, Sportcenter seems to be jacking themselves off over it with way too many recurring stats/highlights/cue-ins even three days later. Phenomenal performance yes, but why burn out a good thing by over using it?

Kind of like the mountain of poker shows out there.

High Stakes Poker may be the only exception to this rule. Since I’m a self-proclaimed “cash game player”, ok I suck at tournaments so I’m forced to play cash games, is that better? I think people can get more out of seeing “true” poker being played for real dollars instead of fake chips that represent the amount of money you’ll receive for placing within a tournament structure. I have nothing against tournaments or the players who excel at them, but there’s an added danger to playing cash games versus the set amount of a freezeout tournament. The psychological difference between bluffing at a pot with tournament chips versus real cash (which you shouldn’t be thinking of your checks as cash in the first place, that’s a post for a different time…).

One unique difference between cash and tournament play is betting on draws and when its “correct” to do so. While stack size does come into play in both games, in tournament play it is actually correct to call a short stack’s “All-in” pre-flop with minimal holdings in hopes of sucking out to eliminate an opponent. Calling all-ins pre-flop with minimal holdings in a cash game is a more refined way of playing video poker.

Sure, today you might catch the nut straight with 64o and crack that table coach’s KK (actually that’s going for the reversed implied tilt odds which can net you money in the future, but that’s a play for the true loose-aggressives out there who are only establishing a table image…). When I’m not playing I like to open up tournaments and watch them, trying to figure out the DaVinci code behind the successful tournament player. “Get lucky” seems to be the cop-out theme that non-winners whine about. I believe there’s a saying “luck favors the prepared mind” or something like that. And with that in mind, there’s a reason why players like CJ, JoeSpeaker, and Otis do well consistently in tournaments, and I do not. It’s not because a leprechaun is stuck up their posteriors, or they made a pact in blood to never appear on American Idol. It’s because they have a game plan that works, granted it might only work 15%-20% of the tournaments they enter, but when a final table cashing pays for the 80% of the misses plus more, its VERY profitable poker. Make sure you’re reading the morsels they drop about being a profitable tournament player; it just might help you get over your bubble finish when your AA got cracked by A5 sOOOOOOOted.

Thanks for dropping by now on a belated note please go give Ryan at Absinthesparks some props for winning a NLHE event at the LA Poker Classic. You sir are the man and will be buying the lap dances at the next WPBT event!!