Some abnormally hot days this past week brought a torrent of winds and rain on Friday.

A coworker drew me over to his window, which overlooks the Potomac River. Normally we can see the other side (Maryland), but the rain grayed out everything. (A couple weeks ago, some rain left an extraordinary rainbow at dusk, with the Maryland strip of buildings brilliantly lit up like spotlights... a Kodak moment for sure.)

I asked him if it's supposed to rain this weekend and he said he didn't know. His sister was supposed to go to the beach on Saturday and there was the big anti-abortion march on Sunday.

Not normally quick with the quips, I was pleased I was able to muster a laugh out of him with: "Mother Nature isn't pro-choice."

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Sometimes I think poker has it in for me. If it were personified in a past life, poker would've been an ex-wife.

Though I ended in the black for the weekend, it wasn't without much struggle. The nice run I had in the SnGs reversed itself with an ugly string of 4th places and below. The last 12 I placed only once. Pretty dismal.

Happily, I built up the bankroll enough to step into 1/2 6max and then 5/10 6max, which saved me from posting a loss. I don't seem to be able to win in both SnGs and ring games: it's one or the other.

When big tournaments are on the line, however, it makes it that much harder to accept and embrace chance. My last hand in the Empire $50K tourney was KK. My stack was average and I raised preflop. Folded to the BB, who thought and completed. The flop had a Jack (no flush or straight possibilities) and he check-raised me. If he had two pair or a set he would have raised the turn. I figured he wanted the pot as soon as possible and put him on a big Jack. I reraised. He called. Turn was blank and he check-called all-in since we were about equal stacks. His cards: AJo. I knew I beat him. Till the river: Ace.

Actually, that was the penultimate hand. I was left with under T400 chips, barely enough for the next round of blinds. When I saw K8s I tossed 'em in. Folded to BB, who had 29o. Just the blind covered me, so he automatically called. The end was like pulling off a Band-Aid -- quick and a tiny bit of pain as he gets his 9 and I'm bounced in 30th place (10 away from cashing) after a bit over three hours of work. First place paid $13,500. 20th place paid $375. As I write this, it's now down to 10 people ($1000) and the AJo guy is chip leader by a wide margin.

I want some luck, that's all I ask. The luck of AJo. The luck of 29o. The luck of any of the people in the SnGs who called my big raises with top pair/bad kicker and then paired up that kicker on the river.

Or the luck of table selection.

Saturday was Empire's $25K freeroll. It quickly became apparent that of the 500+ entrants, at least a third didn't show up. My guess is many people didn't know they were automatically registered (everyone who had over 6500 VIP points), as I never received an email from Empire.

There's a certain skill to playing empty seats with chips. At my table there were four ghost players... one to my left and three to my right. If everyone folded to me, I could raise and capture my invisible opponent's blind.

Unfortunately, other live players were aware of this and became hyper-aggressive simply to steal the blinds.

I checked the chip leader's table, who had the next best thing to winning the lottery. Turns out he was the only player at his table. After the first hour, the chip average was T1000. He had over T9000. All he did that hour was raise every hand to capture the blinds of his nine ghost players. As he would knock people out, they would be replaced by other ghost players.

Now that's luck.

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Congrats to Alt, who correctly guessed Hand of the Week #1. Click here to see the results.

Here's Hand of the Week #2. Good luck!

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Party 5/10 Limit Hold'em (6 max, 6 handed) converter

Preflop: grubby is CO with A A

UTG folds, MP folds, grubby raises, Button calls, SB calls, BB folds.

Flop: (7 SB) A 2 7 (3 players)

SB bets, grubby calls, Button calls.

Turn: (5 BB) K (3 players)

SB bets, grubby calls, Button calls.

River: (8 BB) 7 (3 players)

SB bets, grubby raises, Button folds, SB 3-bets, grubby caps, SB calls.

Final Pot: 16 BB
Main Pot: 16 BB, between grubby and SB.

Click here to post your guess and view other guesses.



poker (Fri-Sun): 30+3 SnGs (0,0,1,1,0,0,0,2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2,0,0,0), 20+2 SnGs (0,0), 10+1 SnGs (0,2,3,2,0,1,2), 1/2 6max (+35), 5/10 6max (+548), 150+12 multi (0)
bankroll: 595 + 280 = 875