Lady Luck is my Beeatch

Well luck from the tournament seemed to follow me to the weekly poker night at UBC ($5 buy in run tournament style). There was an unimpressive showing of only five people compared with last weeks 10+. Damn Hallowe'en. Anyways the first game consisted of myself, Kory, Simon, Chris Blake, and Gaelen. It went on for about two hours with Simon and I heads up, with him having a monstrous chip lead on me. Matt showed up as well around this time so we'd have six players for the next game. Simon ended up winning that game with a win of $20 and I broke even by winning $5.

The next game was also of good quality and had plenty of action. Once again it ended up with Simon and myself playing heads up. It would have made for interesting TV as chip lead swung from me to Simon, and back to me (I've only seen that happen once on TV - the 2003 ladies night tournament on the WPT). There was one had the Simon made a great bluff. He had K 10 of clubs and I had pocket Jacks. There was a bit of raising pre-flop and flop comes down A 8 3 (one club - not the ace) or something like that. I bet about $500 (the blinds were around $100/$200) and Simon re-raises for $1000 more. Now I think he has an ace with mediocre kicker. I debate for a bit and decide to call. Next card is a 7. I raise again and Simon goes all in for like $3000 or something. I'm in a pickle now. If he's bluffing then its a hell of a bluff but if he has an ace, I'm a big underdog with only one card to come. I maybe should have thought a bit more about it and figures the pot odds a few times and put him on a 40% bluff. I let the jacks go face up and he is shocked. He shows me the K 10 of clubs and I congratulate him on a good bluff. I'm not convinced I played the hand wrongly, though I'm sure Daley will tell me otherwise. On the final hand, Simon raises to $600, I reraise and he goes all in. I have K9 off suit and he has 33. Flop has a King and for extra luvin' the River is also a king. I win and get $25 for my efforts. With my win yesterday I'm +$72 in my poker career.

I should also mention some very good books I picked up recently from Chapters online. I bought them because of an article in Bluff magazine. Phil Laak taught Jennifer Tilly how to play and recommend these books first on the list so I figured if a WPT winner thinks they're good, they're probably good.



I read Theory of Poker in about a week and I'm more than half way through the first Harrington book. Sklansky's book is consisdered to be the best poker book ever written and out of the 2.5 poker books I've read, I agree. It teaches some simple concepts and others that are not so simple (implied odds). Very indepth and can be applied to most if not all poker games.

Harrington's books seemed a little shaky at first because the books are at least half full of example hands, which I wasn't sure would be useful. I was quite wrong. There are several pages explaining concepts and then the examples reinforce whatever you were supposed to learn in that chapter. They also act as quizzes by explaining the situation to you and then asking what you should do. I suggest thinking about each problem before skimming down to the answer. It WILL improve your game.