It’s one of those days, kind of gloomy, kind of cold, and windy as hell.  The wind has been on a rampage for the last three days and it definitely cools everything off this time of year.  It seems as if we go from summer, to a few days of fall, to winter.  And while 45 to 50° may not be too cold to some of you, I’m freezing my ass off when it hits.  I turned the heater on yesterday, actually the furnace, and set it to about 62 to 63°.  I prefer to wear a flannel jacket and keep my body warm, to having the air I breathe hot and stuffy so I normally keep the heat turned down.

I did step outdoors at one point today thinking that I might toss a little gravel around and lay a few titles, but just as a thought struck me and I ready to go do it, a tornado hit outside and I gave up and went back to playing poker on the computer.  I have a post up on the Chasing Chris Ferguson blog about quite a bit of my poker play today.  I did end up winning $15 in piece of Darus Million Dollar Man tournament on PokerStars from a FPP buy-in, which is a nice little boost to my tapped out bankroll.  And I managed to win one hand with pocket queens; I was on the button and raised, and got some unfortunate soul that had pocket aces and only 500 or so left in chips, he called my raise and I flopped a set of Queens much to my surprise.  Then I out ran pocket queens in another tournament when I picked up pocket fives and called a raise all in, I flopped a set of fives.

The Queen’s curse may be over for me.

I will have to admit I’m in total shock over the hands that people are willing to go broke on in these tournaments, even if they are free rolls.  It would be different if they were the raiser, but when they are calling a bet that’s going to set them all-in or take up almost all of their chips to see if they can hit a draw, it blows my mind.  I had just that hand happen a few minutes ago in the 12,000 player free roll where I had to get to the top 99 players to win a seat in a free roll that pays real money.  I got down to somewhere around 500 players before I got knocked out.

This is one of the few tournaments that I actually picked up big hands and won the pot, it was almost heart attack time.  I am quite used to never making a hand that I want to put any chips in the pot with, and when I do I’ve been used to getting it beat, and this tournament I actually made hands that held up… until the obviously crucial time point when I needed to have my hand hold up.

I had plenty of chips, around 73,000 and found pocket tens and raised it another 12,000 – blinds were 1-2K.  I got one caller that had the Q-9 of hearts.  If you read my post on the Chasing Chris Ferguson blog where I beat Q-9 with pocket fives, maybe it makes sense that I am playing the wrong hands and I should be playing Q-9 and Q-10 all the time (if I get it of course). But back to this hand, the flop was 6-7-8 and my opponent bet 41,000 at me with nothing other then two over cards and an open-ended straight draw.  I called and I made a set of tens right on the Turn.  Whoppeeee!

Maybe I’m completely off in my thought process here, possibly that hand is worth 41,000 with that board.  I guess that’s why I’m a losing poker player.  I still had around 6K left and won a few pots that put me in the 16,000 to 17,000 bracket for a short time.  Then I picked up ace Jack off suit and raised it all in and got called by 9-8 off suit and they caught an eight.  I still had some measly chips left to flounder around with but they didn’t last long.

And right after I got beat with the Q-9H, some warmhearted soul typed in the chat, ‘do poker really work’.  I’m assuming their English isn’t as good as it should be or they type like shit, and their heart wasn’t in the right place because they were trying to be a rude prick, but it’s just one more rude prick stacked on top of another one at the poker table in my opinion.

The long and short of it is that I actually had a good day playing poker, I managed to snag a $.25 win in a 10 frequent player points buy-in tournament and ran myself through a lot of other tournament hoops and managed to get a lot of work done to boot.  And didn’t swear until the air turned blue.

It’s still cold outside, it’s dark now, and I’m done with poker for the night.

My boy that had the surgery yesterday is going to be fine, that’s a huge blessing, better than winning the World Series of Poker and having all my aces stand up for the rest of my life, if I ever get them again, that’s another story on the chasing Chris Ferguson blog.  I haven’t seen aces in all of the last two days of play.  That’s okay I don’t know how to play them anyway.

Tomorrow’s another day and I’m going to sleep so I can head right into it.