card luck

for the longest time, I wanted to write a program to determine if your cards were lucky or unlucky in the short run. The goal was to quantify being "card dead". I even started writing this program and getting some early results.

Tonight's games were good examples why what cards you get aren't nearly as important as when you get them. I was in two simultaneous SNGs tonight. In the first, I had flopped two pair from the big blind with J7, bet it all the way down, then got counterfeited when the turn and river both came up kings, and lost to JT. I was down half my stack early. So I tightened up and hoped for a hand. Then I got one, JJ in the big blind. I had about 10 BB and was shoving over any raisers or limpers, but everyone folded and I got a "walk" with my relative powerhouse. Damn!

Later in the same tourney, my wish was granted again - KK. I shoved it all in (9BB) and everyone folded. Double Damn!

About two hands later, I witnessed a 3 way all-in between AK, QT (ouch), and AJ. AK held up, 2 players got knocked out, which helped me incrementally, but not my stack.

Why couldn't Queeny-Tenny call me with some similar crap when I had KK? Or, even better, why couldn't I have gotten the KK against the AK/QT/AJ and quadruple up? Nope, the chips flew around the table but by me and I was still crippled.

My final hand was AJ in the big blind. Someone raised a goofy amount (like 333), I shoved over him, he called, with 5h8h and hit two pair to knock me out. He typed "odds" into the chat, which was actually true - he had 2-1 odds on the hand, but callling an all in, half your stack, on 58s in a SNG doesn't seem to be the right play, the hell with the odds. I typed back "uh, no" even though he was probably right. A bit of tilt, yes.

The other tourney, I managed to avoid the bubble and take third. Knucklehead to my right was the big stack but didn't know how to play it - kept limping in, and my stack wasn't big enough to make him really fold, so I dwindled down to around 5BB. I finally took a stand against one of his limps with King-rag, he had 9T suited and knocked me out.

I'm no longer going to entertain thoughts of writing the "card dead" software.

In other news, we're getting a new member in our family in a few weeks. Her name is Rosalia and we visited her today and took some pictures. Can you take this face?