Thorn's Big Mistakes ... In Real Life!

So, I've brought up drinking in my "big mistakes" section before, but this time it's for my drinking habits in general!

This weekend, we partied. One of my friends just moved into our group house, with plans to replace me after I get married and move out. To celebrate the occasion we decided to get a keg. And visit the liquor store. Grabbed a bottle of wine, too.

I ended up starting to drink with my good buddy... at 4 in the afternoon! I remember watching tv, playing some drinking games, chatting with friends, party party party, night ends when I vomit all over myself and my lovely fiancée helps me clean off and get upstairs to bed.

Of course, that's just what I remember. I got to hear the full story the next day (fiancée Thorn always gets this twinkle in her eye when she gets to tell me my shenanigans of the night before).

There was a rowdy trip to McDonald's where I kept stumbling over and spilling water everywhere. There was the drunken run back home, complete with sporadic attempts by yours truly to relieve myself in probably too-public areas. There was me forgetting right then and there at the party, a McDonald's burger in my belly, that we had even gone to McDonald's, loudly denying the trip had happened despite the many burger bags littered about me.

In short, well, I looked like a doofus, and drank way, way too much. Gotta stop that. My fiancée may be amused now, but you can only clean up after the guy who got trashed and made a mess so many times. I get a feeling my liver will thank me for it later, too.



On the good side, my run-good continues at NL25 (no drinking there, hah)!

Bankroll is up to $780.83. Yummy, pokery goodness.

Atlantic City, great cash games

Last weekend, I had a blast. I went to Atlantic City with 6 other guys, all packed into two Super 8 motel rooms near the boardwalk. The first night we got there, we decided to start the night off by taking down a 40 oz. of Hurricane malt liquor apiece (I know, disgusting, but it was $1.50 each to get pretty much wasted).

From there, we let our inner degenerates out. We hit roulette, the craps tables, even some slots in a drunken haze. While it was definitely fun at the time, I need to remember to never, ever, ever gamble on non-poker related games ever again. Let's just say that I ran through a few hundred pretty quickly while betting the minimum $10 wagers or on the penny slots.

Around midnight, I finally started getting that itch to play some good old poker, and wandered off on my own to the Trump Taj Mahal (I was the only one of the guys who was really interested in the cash games). It was completely packed, wait list and all, but it went through pretty quickly and I found myself sitting down pretty quickly amongst the crowd of drunken hooligans throwing their money around without much skill or regard to the cards in play. Unfortunately, I blended in a little too well, still being a drunken hooligan myself and helping myself to the drinks that cocktail waitresses brought around. The night was a blur, but I remember coming back to the motel around 6 am, staggering into bed, and miraculously waking up with around $20 more than I'd gone to the poker tables with.

Huh. Imagine that. Drunk, spewy me, the side of me with some of the worst poker skills ever if you've read my other posts, managed to actually win some money playing against the live crowd. How the hell did that happen?

Needless to say, I felt compelled to go back Saturday night, this time completely sober and itching to win back some of the money I tossed on over to the casinos the night before. Midnight on the weekends was like heaven in the poker room at 1/2 NL. People were raising from early position with junk like K8o to 6 BBs and getting 4+ flat callers. While there were certainly a few people who knew more or less what they were doing, the crowd was by and large incredibly way too loose preflop, not accounting at all for stack sizes or even position, by and large.

What's the best way to exploit that, I thought to myself. Why, a simple shortstacking strategy would be the best, of course. So I buy in for the minimum, and by the end of the night, I quintupled my $60 buy in to $300. Good game, suckers. I can't wait to go back already. I did notice, however, that the huge fish seemed to have lost all their buy-ins by around 3-4 AM. The fish go quick. Here's probably the worst drunken play that I saw that night:

The big fish calls all-in from the button after a UTG raise, my 3-bet raise, and a big stack's 4-bet, 10x shove for 200 BBs. UTG folds, I ditch my QQ, and the 4-bet shover turns over the obvious KK (Hooray for good laydowns! I would've even folded KK in that spot, actually). Silly drunken fish. His hand? Q2 off-suit.

I can't wait until I get to play live there, again. While you may not see many hands compared to online, I love being able to talk to and see other poker players, just shooting the breeze between hands. It also helps that the play is generally just much, much worse since you're in a casino full of degenerate gamblers and the lowest limit is $1/2. Just a little bit, though.

Thorn's Big Mistakes #2: Playing while not entirely sober

When it comes to poker, I have a drinking problem. It doesn't happen often (just twice in the past six months), but when I do end up drinking and then playing poker, I pretty much go donk off a buy-in or two. Sure, that doesn't sound like much, but since I don't put in a huge volume of hands (maybe 100 a day on average), it absolutely kills my winrate.

For example, last week my Godfather came to DC on business and took me out to a bar. We had a good time, some delightful fish and chips, and a few beers. I admit, I'm a terrible binge drinker (I live with 3 other guys, and we have a beer pong room, complete with ball holders and ice racks to keep the beer cold while playing), so the 2-3 that I had seemed like nothing. Not so on the poker table. I pulled up PokerStars, sat in a cash game, and on the third hand I 3-bet a CO open-raiser with 44. He 4-bets. I don't even think about it because my non-completely sober mind is still stuck on the "hey that open-raise looks like a steal attempt" and I shove over the top. He's got KK. Oops. 100 BB in the sewer. What's worse is that I had notes on him from previous play, marking him down as a solid, multitabling TAG who I've only ever seen 4-bet with the goods. If I'd thought about it at all, took the time to read the notes, etc. I would've made the better play of folding to the 4-bet. Sadly, buzzed me doesn't think much.

I'll definitely have to remember to stick to one drink an hour, if that, when I go to Atlantic City in two weeks and am confronted with free drinks at the table. I'm sure I'll have some good stories to tell with 8 good guys coming along and much poker fun to be had. Here's hoping that includes winning.