A Disturbance in the Force

I'm sure the title will attract some people to think that this post is Star Wars related. It isn't.

Over at Jason's blog, I noticed a comment from Bob about many of us seeming to be on a downswing. Indeed something is amiss. I present further evidence that this phenominon is not limited to the online world.

My bi-weekly home game was last night. I got crushed to the tune of -$149 bringing my YTD totals to -$341. Woof. This is the same group of people who I managed to win $2200+ in the 2004 calendar year. In fact, the guy that probably lost the most last year is our current big winner for this year. As The Rocket mentioned (who is also down this year), it is Bizarro World poker.

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Whenever I lose at the live game, I get home and am a bit too wired to sleep. The solution? Duh.

I fired up PokerStars and played a $20 SNG. The structure here is much less a crapshoot than the SNG's at Party. As I'm sure most of you are aware, you start with T1500 and the levels are 10 minutes long rather than 10 hands. Also, the blinds don't move up so quickly as to make pushing with ATC necessary at any of the first four to five levels.

Well, that didn't stop some of the maniac, anti-braniacs at my table. The chip leader, on level 2, called an all-in from the 2nd place guy with J,8 suited. He didn't win the hand. One guy would push his T1400 to steal the T25 blinds in the first level. "Wow" was all I could think of. Yeah I know, that's creative.

I managed to win this SNG in about an hour's time and retired to a sleep made a bit easier by the recouping of some bankroll.

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I will be sweating G-Rob and his mighty play this Sunday as he tries to qualify for the WSOP over at CheckNRaise. I'm sure he'd welcome some railbirds to cheer him on. I told him that if he qualified, I'd buy in directly to the same $1000 event myself.

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I have an online tourney scheduled myself for Sunday at 7:30. The players over at the TalkingPoker forum have set up a $10 tourney on Stars. I'm thinking it will be fun, although I'm not sure what kind of a turnout there will be. At any rate, it should help me tune up a bit for the WPBT on the 2nd.