VARIANCE!!!

Or, how to lose $130 in two weeks!

Yep, the 'roll has taken a swing downward and it looks like it might be time for a quick break! I guess these things happen, you lose a couple buy-ins at the $25 NL tables and thats where you are. The truth of the matter is that I got up so high in the last month that it was like me against the world, with me winning no matter what! It wasn't like I played hands rather bad, I just put myself into pretty bad situations.

Here's an interesting hand from this past weekend. I sat down at the regular .1/.25 table and after about 45mins I was down about $10, not too bad, but I was about ready to get up or re-buy, I decided one hand in MP would do the trick, so I waited for something decent. I got A8 of hearts in the CO and limped into a pot with about 4 other limpers. BB checked and we saw a flop of Q 4 9 w/ two hearts giving me four to the flush. Check, Check, Check, I bet about 1.50 and get one caller then one guy checkraises me the minimum. I decide to call that. Turn is a blank and it gets checked to me and I happily take the free card. River is a wonderful heart, it gets checked to me and I put out a value bet of about 1/2 the pot. The checkraiser goes all in and I take it down with the nut flush. Turns out the guy also had hearts, JT of hearts. Anyway, that gets me back up to about $26-27 and I feel great. It goes around for another round when I get in the BB with two red 4's. One guy in 2nd pos. min raises my BB after UTG limps, it folds around to me and I call as does UTG. We see a flop of J 9 4 with two spades I decide to get tricky (not a good idea here), and check raise. UTG bets the minimum, 2nd Pos. raises the size of the pot, I re-raise, UTG calls 2nd Pos, goes all-in as do I and UTG. I was figuring that both were on a straight and flush draw...turns out that I had bottom set, UTG had 34o!! and 2nd pos. had pocket 9's. The funniest part of the whole hand was that I thought i was dead after the turn because another spade fell, and to make matters worse, another fell on the river! Funny right, even funnier because no one even had one spade! Anyway, that one hurt a bit, but I have since shrugged it off. I feel pretty good about my play, but as the title states, it's just variance.

On another note, I have done pretty well in the $10+1 SnG's. I haven't played enough of them to show much of my results but lets just put my ITM at roughly 45%. Though I haven't won one in the last two weeks I have a couple seconds and thirds. So I will continue to play these as well as the $5's and the MTT $5's and 10's. Triple draw was even kicking my butt a little, but i'm not too worried about that game, I really like it and am still in the black in it.

As far as music, I still have not bought the new Leo Kottke/Mike Gordon CD and I really need to get it. The Martin Scorsese documentary on Bob Dylan is on again tonight (the first half was on last night) and I thought it was fantastic. My buddy David let me borrow the "soundtrack" which I have been listening to all of the last two days. In the car right now is: Leo Kottke live album, Bob Dylan "No Direction Home", Widespread Panic, Tribe Called Quest!.

UB Stats:
9/14/05 - 9/27/05
Starting Balance: $532.50
Cash Games: -$130
Tournaments: +$6
Ending Balance: $408 MAN THIS IS DEPRESSING :)