I blow my nose at you....

..and call your door-opening request a silly thing.

This is me to the poker gods today. They were gunning big-time for me, but I wouldn't give in. Didn't tilt, didn't spew. Kept my play solid and was thrilled with a 20 big blind loss on the night.

Consider the challenge I faced:

Aces cracked in a three bet pot. All club-flop, no ace of clubs for me. I bet big and my opponent calls - I'm 100% sure he has the ace of clubs, maybe top pair to go with it. I'm going to get paid.... until the club on the turn. Easy check/fold.

2 hands later, an Omaha hand, AATT, one suit. Whiff. check/fold. No biggie, it's almost a misnomer to say Omaha hands get "cracked" - there are really no big hands until we see the flop anyway. But it's still fun to say I got aces cracked twice in three hands, so I will.

A four-way pot with pocket sixes, on a JJx flop. A tight aggressive player leads out after I check. I can actually see his cold-calling hand chart in my head - he doesn't play KJ/QJ to a raise. Maybe AJ, maybe JTs as connectors. It is way more likely for me to have a jack than he. He has pocket eights-tens and is clearing the field. I checkraise.

He thinks a long time, then calls the raise. A ten on the turn, we check. I'm not even loving life if my six comes right now.

It doesn't. A rag. I give up, he rolls $45 out there. He has JT, or flopped a boat with whatever card wasn't the jack on the flop with a small pocket pair .

My personal favorite - I raise a limper with a hidden 7cTc and have two callers. Pair on the flop, gutshot+flush draw on the turn, and my flush on the river. Someone leads out for a pathetic $4 into $18, I raise it up to $22. He re-raises to $50-something.

I consider all options - is he value-3betting a worse flush, or the straight that's out there? No way. Nobody in my game is value-3betting worse, or 3bet bluffing the river. It's the nuts. Severe puke-fold for me.

What else you got, bitches? I'm still here.

Cleveland casino "trip" report (it's 0.4 miles away from my work) coming Saturday night....