There just doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day to fit in all of the things I want to do, and currently it’s my sleep that gets deprioritized. I think I have to find a more efficient way of living, but being an efficiency freak as it is, I’m starting to run out of ways to optimize. I suppose I could chop the onions needed for dinner while in the bathroom, though. That would probably be the next step.

I’m leaving for Beijing in a week from now, and I’ll be there for 8 days (on business). I haven’t been there before, and for the first time in a long while, I’m actually excited about a business trip. There’s a lot of stuff I’m interested in seeing while there, and it’s going to be very cool to get to experience it.

It’s been a busy week, which is why the third (and final) post about blind play has been awhile in the works - sorry about that.

In the two previous posts, I’ve talked about when it’s correct to call in the big blind, what kind of hands you should be looking for and how much you can allow yourself to loosen up. Today, I want to talk about when you should raise from the blinds. Now, I’m not entirely happy with the format; I much prefer to look at a situation and gauge what the correct action is, than look at an action and try to find situations that fit. Nonetheless, bear with me - I’m trying to find situations that display typical characteristics of when to raise.

In the last post, I talked about how to think of your position relative to the raiser when playing marginal preflop holdings out of the blinds. Playing those situations correctly will do great things for you, but a situation where you can save or win even more money if you play it right is against a steal attempt.

Around 20% of your time at a full table, you’re going to be posting a blind and statistically, chances are you’re going to suck from that point on. Statistically? Yes. I find that the vast majority of players have no idea how to play from the blinds - which is no surprise, given that the vast majority of players aren’t very good to begin with, but most of them get even worse as soon as they look up and see that they have already invested money in the pot.

My next couple of posts in this blog will deal with the blinds, therefore, in the hopes that my reader (readers? Let’s be optimistic!) gets a chance to improve this important part of his or her play.

… drop the T, because bich is latin for generousity.

Unfortunately, however, variance has not been generous to me lately. I’ve had all sorts of beats the past few days.

* Bad beats, of the “can’t I ever be allowed to win with what’s the best hand before the river?”
* Well-earned beats of the “why don’t I ever learn to not bluff the calling stations or call the rock’s raise.”
* World-must-hate-me beats of the “let’s both flop sets and make yours higher” kind.

I’ve had downswings before, and I know to expect it to happen. I’m better at dealing with them nowadays than I’ve been before though, and I think I’m able to learn from them and not letting them completely destroy my confidence.

My cold is officially almost over!

To celebrate, I went to the gym this morning and probably caught another cold by riding my bike through the freezing morning temperatures. Starting the week with a workout is a tradition that I’m pretty happy with, anyway. Gives me energy.

I’m starting to seriously feel the need for a new monitor at home. Specifically, I’d like the exact model that I have at work: A 19″ Dell Ultrasharp. There are a few good reasons for this, and some that are not so good:

I’m coughing, sniffling, sneezing and walking around in a sort of daze with that stupid-confused look on my face that people with a cold have. I’ll live, of course, but right now I mostly just want the use of my nostrils back.

Poker-wise, yesterday was one of those nights where the cards had conspired against me, and I wasn’t going to make money no matter how well I played. Add to this the fact that I have a cold, so chances are it wasn’t my A-game I was playing, and you have yesterday’s disaster.

But here’s an observation.

As some of you know, I returned to online poker early this summer after a (for various reasons, none being financial) little more than a year (maybe even two years, I forget) away from it. I decided to start from scratch, with a $100 deposit, and work my way up from there. I had done alright for myself previously while playing online, and I had been playing with friends for many years. But I wanted to start over anyway - start over and work myself through the literature.

I’ve been playing a bit of PL Omaha 8/b, trying to get a better grasp of the game. And wow, I suck at it. I realize when I make stupid calls, but unfortunately not until after I’ve made them. Same with re-raising all-in. And I’m having this overwhelmed feeling that I’ll never understand this game. But I’m sure it will come in time. Currently, I’m working on learning what hands to play preflop.

I think, and I’m basing this off of the massive experience that 100 hands will bring you, that I’m not too fond of the hi/lo-split structure. What I like about Omaha is how the game focuses more on the player’s ability to analyze a situation than hold’em. I appreciate that. But people chase lows all over the place, and I just haven’t learned how to deal with that yet. Getting rivered hurts less here than in hold’em, because it only costs you half the pot, but it happens a whole lot more often!

My internationally acclaimed “Tip of the Day” was left out of my last post, for which I’ve received hundreds - if not thousands - of emails asking me to please add a bit of advice. Not wanting to disappoint, today’s entire post will be poker advice - and two at that, to make up for the lost one.

Fire All Three Barrels
A common - sometimes too common - tactic in limit poker is the semibluff: Betting “on the come” with a hand that is unlikely to be the best hand at the moment, where you’re mostly hoping your opponent(s) will fold, but in case they don’t, you’re hoping your speculative hand will turn into a winner. This is usually done with straight- or flushdraws.