Very Josie has a favor to ask of you

Go read about it here: 

http://veryjosie.blogspot.com/2014/01/ahem-its-very-josie.html

Additional notes on yesterday's online play

I forgot to mention three important things that happened yesterday, while Josie and I were playing one sit-and-go and one regular tournament:

1. Josie got knocked out of the big tournament when she ran into my pocket kings.

2. Josie got knocked out of the SNG when with J-8 she tried to steal my big blind, and I had A-A.

3. Josie called me a whore.

Neither up nor down

When I was a wee lad in Sunday School, the teachers often had us sing an action song "to get the wiggles out" before moving on to the substance of the lessons. One of the favorites was "The Noble Duke of York." This has many variants on both the words and tune, but this is the way I learned it:

Oh, the Noble Duke of York
He had ten thousand men.
He marched them up a hill
And he marched them down again.

Now when you're up you're up,
And when you're down you're down.
But when you're only halfway up,
You're neither up nor down.

We would be instructed to stand up on the "up" lines, sit back down on the "down" lines," and sort of half stand up on the "halfway" line.

I don't know whether it was due to subliminal indoctrination from that song or just a natural predisposition, but I've never liked being in between places, on the way from one location to another. I want to either be where I was or where I'm going. Of course I've heard a lifetime of advice from people telling me to enjoy the trip, stop and smell the roses, etc. And I do try. Once in a while I even succeed. But most of the time I revert back to my habitual squirreliness about being neither here nor there, and want to get the journey over with. Even though I'm shorter than average, most people have a hard time keeping up with my walking pace if I go as fast as I'm inclined to go, because I want to be there already.

This is on my mind at the moment because Josie emailed me this morning to ask how the move to North Carolina was going. I dashed off a grumpy reply saying that it sucked. I then started to enumerate the ways in which it sucked, which is what has me on this little tantrum.

I have to sell a bunch of stuff, give away other stuff, and just throw away yet more items. My apartment is in more disarray than it ever has been because of the process of figuring out what to do with everything. I still haven't completely settled on what means of moving the things I'm keeping will be. I can't tell how much will fit in my car and how much I have to ship separately. My bike is all taken apart for shipment so I can't go riding. I don't sleep well because I'm fretting about the thousand and one decisions I have to make and worrying about getting them wrong. I sweat that I'm not going to get everything coordinated and done in the time frame I've set out. (I'm shooting to head out of town February 7th or 8th and arrive in Asheville four or five days after that.) I'm constantly thinking about all the things that might go wrong at the last minute, even with the best-laid plans. There are large expenses to be incurred in shipping, gasoline for a cross-country drive, in paying temporary double rent and utilities, down payments, deposits, fees, etc.--and at the same time my income will drop to zero for a couple of weeks while I get a work space outfitted out east. I have one of my largest-ever consulting jobs waiting to be done, having promised to try to finish it before I move. I don't know if I'll have time or opportunity to get together with friends for any sort of proper good-bye before I'm gone. All in all, I'm just feeling pretty damn sorry for myself, in the most whiny, juvenile, embarrassing, and pathetic way possible.

To anticipate a likely thought going through readers' minds: no, this angst is not reflective of doubt about or resentment for the move itself. I am fully at peace with that. Sure, I'd be happy to be staying put. But I'd also be entirely happy to be in Asheville, in my new apartment, with everything already settled, maybe even with an adopted kitty as a companion (which I can't have where I am), with a lot more space than my current apartment gives me (and ten times nicer to boot), free to get together with Cardgrrl whenever we feel like it. It really is just the disruptive, unsettling, in-between-ness of it all that is gnawing at me all day every day. It's existing in a state of limbo that I hate, being not quite hither and not quite yon.

I think it must be a universal experience that parents teach their kids far more life lessons thoughtlessly, by accident, just in the course of daily life, than they do through the occasional carefully planned chat or activity. (Don't worry. This is going somewhere, and it will all connect back.) My dad's 90th birthday is Friday, and I'll be driving up to Salt Lake City for the weekend for a family get-together. The impending occasion has caused me to reflect on some of the things he taught me in moments that he was probably not intending to be life lessons, and which he likely does not remember as vividly as I do.

He is an inveterate tinkerer. Over my growing-up years, he made a lot of improvements to our modest home. One of the biggest additions was turning the long wall of our family room into bookshelves, storage cabinets, and a window seat. While he was in the middle of that project, which seemed to be taking forever (everything seems to take forever when you're 7), I commented about how much work he was putting into it. He replied, "Yes, but you just get it done, and then you get to enjoy it for a lot longer than it took to do it."

I'm trying to keep that in mind over the next several weeks of chaos and uprooting. (Uprooting--that's an interesting word that popped into my brain there. Like moving a plant to a larger pot so that it has more room to grow.) I just want it to be done so that I can get on with enjoying what awaits me on the other side.

Josie knows

From last night's "The Dank" tournament on PokerStars:

Brownies!

A got a package today from Very Josie. So if you don't hear from me for a while, it's because I have eaten them all, turning my body into a giant, fat mass of chocolate, and have gotten stuck in Willy Wonka's pipes like Augustus Gloop.

Thank you, Josie!

SHIP THE BROWNIES!

As the post below this one details blow by blow, I actually pulled it off. Last night I was highly pessimistic that I would be able to replicate yesterday's results and get myself to $1200 before the end of the night. I put my chance of success at under 10%.

When I got up today, I found this email from Josie, apparently in response to my closing comment last night that I was waiting for her to tell me which events to play:

Now I want you to win another token. And then play another tourney. Having a small party for evan's bday, which is actually tomorrow, so I won't be around until early evening my time. Like not before 7pm. Don't let that stop you from doing your thang though. It would be great if you had your token won by 7pm so I can watch you play a big tourney with sharks. I fully expect the bloodshed to be shark blood.

1.) Win the token
2.) Win big cash in a big tourney

Hop to it!

Well, I didn't do that. I wanted to play in the big Sunday $11 tourney with guaranteed prize money. When I busted out of that, there wasn't a token tourney soon, so I jumped into something else, then another something else, and another. Nothing to show for any of it.

So I decided I had better do as I had been told, lest I incur the wrath of a Sicilian. I entered an $11 token event, and pulled one out fairly easily. It was for a $109 tournament, which I was going to use to play the only $100 event left on today's schedule--the same one as I did last night. While waiting for that to start, I eked out two small cashes, one in a HORSE, one in a no-limit hold'em.

Then it was time for the sink-or-swim tourney. I did even better than last night! I finished in 4th, and likely could have gotten at least 3rd if not for an ugly beat on the last hand. That scored me $620 on my $11 initial investment. I spent quite a bit (well, maybe $70-80) during the afternoon on that bunch of tournaments that yielded nothing, but this one more than compensated for it.

Above is a screen shot of my end-of-day balance on Black Chip Poker. Josie had originally challenged me to double my balance, which was then (July 25) sitting at $660.72. She later amended that to a threshold of an even $1200 balance--but I did both! That $1485.98 you see above is about $286 over the second, lower goal, and about $164 over the original goal. Of course, I needed every last little bit of the extra five days that she tacked on to the original terms, but the past 15 days is still the fastest I've earned money with online poker. A body just needs to have a goal and sufficient motivation, I guess.

My deepest thanks to Josie for providing both the goal and the additional incentive, as well as for opening my eyes to how profitable the MTTs on the Merge network can be. As you can see, there isn't much that I won't do for brownies. Well, brownies and money.

Now SHIP THE BROWNIES!

(And please remember: No nuts.)

From now on, Josie is in charge of my career

I had another min-cash in a Black Chip Poker tournament this afternoon. It was an especially frustrating one because when we got into the money, I had the biggest stack. But then I misplayed a couple of hands and got unlucky in a third, and I was the first one out after the bubble. GAAAAAAAAAAAA!

I griped a bit about it to Josie via email, since I considered it her fault that I've been on this flurry of online tournament play lately. She quickly wrote back, telling me to enter a coupon tournament. That's where the top finishers don't win cash, but pick up a prepaid entry into a more expensive tournament. Given the frequency with which I've been min-cashing, her logic was unassailable: "I'd like you to play for a token. That way when you min cash again it'll be for substantially more money. Size of token is up to u. $33 - $100. Go do it."

Well, my way sure hasn't been working to get me any significant progress towards that elusive $1200 and batch of brownies, with the deadline looming tomorrow. So I might as well try it her way.

I looked at the tournament lobby, and one such event was starting just a few minutes later. It was an $11 buy-in, and the top eight finishers would all win a ticket to get into any $100 + $9 tournament. So I did it.

And whaddya know? I won one on my first try!

So now what to do with it? Josie had apparently gone to bed (what with the east coast time and all) and wasn't responding to emails, so I was on my own. There were basically two choices: I could hang up the pokerz for the night and tomorrow enter the Merge network's version of a Sunday major. This is a big deal with a guaranteed prize pool of $125,000. That obviously gives potential for an enormous win, but it's also a tournament that attracts all the sharks. It would be a much tougher field than I usually have to face on BCP. It would also likely take many hours to complete, and I might well be left empty-handed after investing that time.

The other choice: In about ten minutes, they were going to start a $6000 guaranteed deep stack turbo event. (If anybody can explain to me the logic of having a tourney be simultaneously deep stack and turbo, please do. It has always seemed to me to be an illogical structure, trying to simultaneously achieve two mutually inconsistent goals.) Only 24 people had registered, which meant that there might be a huge overlay. (There wasn't in the end; a bunch of late registrations put us just past the threshold, at 61 runners.) I was still feeling reasonably fresh, and had been playing smart and carefully through the coupon event. So even though I don't like turbo structures, I decided to jump in. I was willing to take the higher probability of a cash rather than try to gamble on the big one tomorrow.

I put on some Mozart (scientific fact: Mozart is only slightly less powerful than Elvis Presley at bringing the poker run-good) and dug in. I was determined to concentrate, rather than play with the divided attention that I admittedly do most of the time. That nearly $2K first prize was singing its sweet siren song to me, and I wanted it. So I turned off the Olympics, checked Twitter only during breaks, stopped taking my turns in Words With Friends games, and studied what my opponents were doing.I got a rush of big hands right at the beginning, had a double-up within the first orbit, and was on my way.

And it worked! I didn't win, but I made it into the money--and not even a min-cash this time:

You know what that is? That's a $488 payback on my $11 investment. It's also my biggest online tournament score since Black Friday, more than a year ago. For somebody like me who has invested essentially no time and effort in studying contemporary concepts of online tournament strategy, that's not too shabby.

There were a bunch of hands that I took snapshots of, but, really, I don't think they're particularly interesting, and right now I'm that weird combination of too tired and too excited to talk about them. Suffice it to say that I both took and inflicted my share of ugly beats along the way. I was consciously being more aggressive than my usual style because of the turbo structure, and that increased my variance. Ah, hell, why soft-pedal it? It was a freakin' roller coaster! I swung between chip leader and being on the verge of elimination more times than I could count. But it worked out well enough. Not a complete takedown, but still quite satisfying.

It also moved my marker a long way toward the goalposts: My BCP balance now sits at $831. Hitting $1200 by 24 hours from now is still problematic. It basically means repeating today's performance, which is demonstrably an outlier. But it's not impossible.

I'll give it a fair try anyway--as soon as Josie tells me what events to enter.

Brownie update

As reported here, Josie has given me until August 5 (extended from the original deadline of July 31) to get my Black Chip Poker account up to $1200 in order to earn a batch of what she claims to be the world's best brownies. This challenge was issued when the balance stood at $661. I have been trying mightily, but with little to show for it. I've had a couple of min-cashes, but that's about it. It has been fail, fail, fail, several tournaments a day every day. Deeply demoralizing.

Tonight was the first glimmer of hope I've had. It was an $11 freezeout, which is most of what I've been doing, with the $2000 guaranteed prize pool well exceeded. My stack was below average for most of the tournament, but never in dire straits. The lack of flexibility that a cramped stack brings forced me to just play solid ABC, not get much out of line.

Just before the money bubble burst, I cracked aces with tens by flopping a set, won an enormous pot, and took over the tournament chip lead with 27 left. But then I entered the card graveyard, and was dealt a never-ending string of J-2, 8-3, etc. The big stack gave me the ability to just ride out the flurry of all-ins that inevitably occurs for a while after the bubble bursts, but that meant that I was not the one profiting by knocking out other players. I was just coasting. By the final table bubble, I was down to below average.

But I got a big opportunity. At a four-handed table, the short stack open-shoved with what turned out to be A-2. I re-shoved with Q-Q, expecting that to end the action. But the big stack in the small blind called, showing A-K.

Here's how it played out:

As soon as I flopped the set, I relaxed and actually missed the fact that Mr. A-K turned the straight. When my table disappeared, I thought it was just because with the elimination we were on to the final table. But the new table didn't pop up. That's when I looked at the hand history and realized what had happened. It made me want to throw up.

So I finished in 8th:

If I had won that pot, I would have had about 198,000 chips. I would have been way out in front with the chip lead, and would have been in a prime position to go for the $625 first prize.

"For of all sad words of tongue or pen,

The saddest are these: 'It might have been!'"

I've done so many buy-ins with so little reward that the $82 I won only brings me back up to $415. This is still more than double what it was a couple of weeks ago, before I had those two nice scores back to back, but obviously still well down from my peak. It seems impossibly far from $1200, given less than 48 hours left to get there.

Along the way, I had two opportunities to prove the power of the Mighty Deuce-Four, and it did not disappoint. I flopped two pair both times, bet and won both pots:

I'm afraid it's going to be back to brownie mixes from the store for me. So sad.

Bad Grump! No brownies!

I have been playing much more online the past three days than I have in a long time. After a couple of nice wins, which I described here, my $200 deposit on Black Chip Poker had been turned into $661. Josie challenged me to try to get it to $1200 by the end of the month. It's a tall order. But she promised me the world's best brownies if I managed it. I cannot resist brownies. (They better not have nuts in them. I'll never understand why so many people ruin perfectly good brownies by adding nuts. Yuck.)

Whether or not they are the best, at this point, I'm afraid that they will be the most expensive brownies on earth--and I may pay for them and then never get to eat them. I have just been completely unable to win anything.

Tonight, first tournament I entered, second hand: AA. I raise and push it on every street, including a shove at the end. What was I up against? The Mighty Deuce-Four, which had turned trips on me:

Betrayed by the hand I have done so much to promote! It's an outrage, I tell you.

But I did take my small measure of revenge. I entered another tournament and started to beat other people's 2-4:

And as if in a feeble attempt at an apology, Deuce-Four did win me one pot tonight:

It wasn't enough, though, to overcome other horrendous beats I was taking. Here's a nice, clean five-outer, for instance:

I've been losing with K-K versus somebody else's Q-Q all in pre, with A-K versus A-Q all in pre, etc. Brutal, brutal, brutal.

But on the bright side, Josie and I were at the same table for quite a while in one of the events, and I was able to torture her, which is always fun.

Here, for example, she raised with A-8 and I called from the small blind with A-3. I flopped trips and let her bet the hand for me twice before check-raising her. She called not only that, but a healthy value bet on the river, too. The board was double-paired and she thought we'd chop it with an ace each. Uh, nope!

(Sorry I didn't do the screen grab right on that one, so it doesn't show our names or starting hands. But trust me on that history.)

A while later, I pulled this very ugly bit of nastiness on her, again with the treys:

(Ignore that colored stripe. I don't know how or why that got highlighted.)

My excuses (which admittedly is all they are): She only min-raised pre-flop, so it was cheap for me to call from the big blind. Then I flopped a pair. Who can fold a pair for one bet? She might have had A-Q and missed completely. And even if she had an overpair, my 8 gives me a draw to two pair. Then on the turn I added a flush draw. Fold a pair and a two-pair draw and a flush draw? Who ever heard of such nonsense! Then I rivered the trips, moved in, and she called with top pair/top kicker. What a donkey!!!!

(OK, truth is, if you want to tell me that I did everything wrong in that hand except shoving the river, I won't argue with you.)

Would you like to guess what that hand got me called in the IM chat? Hint: It rhymes with "door."

But Josie takes her revenge seriously. She dinged me something fierce with this hand later:

I lectured her about playing that one badly, but it likely fell on deaf ears, coming from somebody who had called her raises from out of position with A-3 and 8-3 and had gotten ridiculously lucky.

We both had barely more than min-cashes in that tournament, but it was a small prize pool, so not much more than the buy-in back.

I may try again tomorrow night. But the results had better turn around pretty quick, or I will be out both the money and the brownies. I'm not sure I could live with myself if that happened.

I blame Josie, obviously

After all, she's the one that got me on this little online MTT kick the last few days.

I gave it another shot today. First two tourneys were pretty fast busts. But in the third, I caught fire early and was consistently in the top 20% of stacks through almost the whole thing, peaking at 3rd place fairly deep in the game:

I had grand visions of nearly criminal levels of abusing the poor short stacks on the bubble. But a couple of hands went bad and I ended up with a somewhat below average stack when the bubble came, so I had to just play tight through it.

When it had passed, the player to my right tried stealing the blinds twice in a row, and I shoved on him both times with mediocre hands, and he folded. This was a big boost to my chip position.

Then, to reuse a metaphor from the other day, that big ol' iceberg floated down south into the shipping lanes again.

I have KK and two players move all-in ahead of me! Wheeeeeee! Even better, when the cards are revealed, I have them both crushed:

Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose!

Except that you can, in fact, lose:

They BOTH make full houses against me. (For the record, I was 68% to win when the money went in.)

Two hands later, I'm blessed (so to speak) with KK again. This time I'm up against AQ. Once again, all-in pre-flop and I'm a huge favorite. Until fourth street:

I feel the need to cite that Geico commercial where the guy tries to save money on a weight-loss program by just having three teenage girls follow him around, shaming him with comments on what he eats: "Ew." "Seriously?" "So gross."

I was left with only about 4 big blinds, which soon went in and lost. And with that, hopes for an $1100 score went crashing to the bottom of the ocean:

$60 cash, minus $22 entry fee is $38 profit. I think both of the earlier ones were $11, so net $16 for about 5 hours.

Ew. Seriously? So gross.

The only bit of amusement I got from it was seeing this very nice screen name/avatar combo:

"You should be playing MTTs," Josie said. "You'll make tons of money," Josie said. "You're so good at them," Josie said. "You'll have fun," Josie said.

Friggin' Josie.

Another nice online cash

I knew early on that today was going to be a kind of lazy, stay-home day, trying a few more online tournaments. And it was. I did four of them in the afternoon, but scored just one min-cash. Disappointing.

I went offline, had dinner, watched a movie, made a batch of absolutely perfect brownies. (Best mix is Ghirardelli's "Chocolate Supreme." That company makes about 7 different variations, but the "Chocolate Supreme" is the one to get.) I decided that I had one more shot in me for the day. I checked Black Chip Poker, and there was a $3000 guarantee $10 rebuy event underway. It had been running for 30 minutes or so already, so if I joined I would be at somewhat of a chip disadvantage. But I had the itch, and it was the only tourney of the right game type, buy-in that I wanted, etc. So I took it.

I doubled up on my second hand, so never felt the need for any rebuys or for the add-on at the first break. My investment, therefore, was minimal. The prize pool was $3820 from 160 players, so the average investment was about $24. I got in cheap.

I played my very best, made good decisions throughout. Never got outrageously lucky. The worst I ever got it in was about 2 spots off the bubble, I was down to 14 big blinds and shoved with a suited J-9 in late position, got called by A-K offsuit. Flop A-J-9. That gave me enough chips that I didn't have much of a sweat of making the money after that.

People kept going out fast, and we moved up and up the money ladder. The end came when I was third in chips with four left, but still pretty healthy stacks. The biggest stack raised with K-10, I reraised with A-10 from the small blind. He called. Flop was 10-Q-2. I shoved, he called. And you can sort of guess what happened:

Frickin' 3-outer on the river! Winning that pot would have put me in prime position to take the whole thing down, for a top prize of $1031. Sigh.

Oh well. The $347 I got instead is still the biggest online score I've had since Black Friday last year. Besides, the cash was enough to make my earning rate for the day around $40 per hour. So I shouldn't complain.

You remember that I mentioned the other day that Josie is always trying to get me to do multi-table tournaments instead of single-tables? Well, though it pains me greatly to say this, it's theoretically POSSIBLE that Josie was right.

REAL winner this time

I had a horrible night of poker at the Stratosphere last night, the kind that was bad enough that I knew that I would not feel like going out to play today, which meant that I could instead dink around with the online stuff. I told Josie this, asked her when she might want to play, and she said, "Now." OK.

She picked a $10 turbo bounty tournament on Black Chip. She did great, and ended up taking 2nd place. I bombed out fairly early. She wanted to start a second game. The next MTT up was another bounty event, $15, with $10 to the prize pool and a $5 bounty. She busted from this one even faster than I had from the first, perhaps because she was focusing on her deep run. But I went on to have my own deep run this time--the deepest kind, in fact:

After Josie had finished her game, she went off and had dinner, so she didn't see my little triumph. She came back on to IM a few minutes after it was all over:

Josie: where are you?

Josie: are you still in the game?

Grump: it just ended

Grump: I winz it

Josie: omfg

Josie: congrats

Grump: you did not see.

Josie: awesome!

Grump: so sad

Josie: nooo

Josie: i wouldve loved to watch you

Josie: damn i just missed it

Josie: see what i mean?

Josie: these are the games to make money

Josie: you played 2 and cashed in one

[Editorial note: When we get together to chat and play, we always disagree on what event to pick. I always prefer SNGs for the shorter time commitment and higher likelihood of cashing. She prefers MTTs for the chance at a bigger score. She usually defers to my wishes, but today I deferred to hers.]

Grump: takes a long time though

Josie: so what

Josie: i wish i stayed

Josie: i thought you were out

Grump: 1st place $179, plus I picked up about 8 bounties, $5 each

Josie: ohh and dont think i didnt notice

Josie: omfg

Grump: didn't notice what?

Josie: i take 2nd...and you MUST take first

Josie: omfg

Grump: lol

Josie: dammit

This is Josie being a supportive friend, by complaining that I topped her outcome!

Anyway, along the way I snapped off a bluff with the Mighty Deuce-Four. (To read the hand history, you have to imagine the lower screen shot here as if to the right of the upper one.)

When down to six-handed play, I was the huge chip leader and feeling like I was cruising to the win. But then my Titanic hit an iceberg. I got it all in with flopped two pair versus opponent's overpair, and he turned a set. Then on the very next hand I lost in a flopped set-over-set situation. Ugh. It was brutal.

Good thing I had had that big chip lead, and enough cushion to survive those massive hits. They took me down to below average.

Fortunately, there was not a single other aggressive player in the bunch. They were all playing ABC poker, betting/raising if they had something, folding if they didn't. So I was able to rob them mercilessly, picking up nearly every orphan pot, and gradually climbed back into parity. With three left, our stacks were so even that the chip lead changed after almost every pot, until I knocked out one, went into heads-up with the lead, and never relinquished it.

The final hand:

It's been quite a long time since I took first in an online, multi-table, real-money tourney. I have to grant this to Josie's side of the argument: It feels pretty damn good.

Poopcorn must die

Now, see, I'm laughing out loud just typing out that post title. Sadly, only one reader will find it as funny as I do.

I was playing a few SNGs with Josie tonight, and IM-chatting with her on the side, when I had occasion to type that phrase. As I looked at it there on my screen, I thought, "There must come into existence a blog post with that title. It's too good to waste." I lamely suggested to Josie that she write one, but I don't think she will. So it falls to me.

The problem is that the story that generated the phrase, well, it just isn't very interesting, nor is it very funny. If I bothered to type it out, you'd all read it and think, "That's it?" Which is probably what you'll think when I end up leaving it a mystery, too. Oh well. Nothing I can do about that.

I guess you'll just have to take my word for it: Poopcorn must die.

Busy weekend

Back from New Mexico.

Busy weekend ahead. Tomorrow night Josie will be arriving in town, and I guess we're going out to a steak dinner somewhere. She claims--get this!--that I owe her this dinner because of losing to her at poker. Have you ever heard such a ridiculous thing in your life? She's obviously hallucinating, but I'm going along with it, because it can be dangerous to confront a psychotic person about his or her delusions.

Tomorrow is also reported to be the opening of the newest poker room in town, at Ellis Island casino. E.I. is one of the few non-pokery casinos that I've been in several times, because of its excellent barbecue restaurant. I hear that the room will be just two tables, so not exactly a tsunami hitting the local poker scene and overthrowing the big boys.

Saturday night is another allvegaspoker.com tournament, with no rake and free pizza, which on both counts clearly elevates it above that piddly ol' WSOP thing that's going on.

Then Sunday night is a private poker tournament for friends Tony Bigcharles and readers of his blog.

I'll let you know if any interesting and/or amusing stories result from any of the above.

Merge Network is having, um, issues

As I noted yesterday, Merge did a full revamp of their software Monday night. It took many more hours than they had promised, and even when they were up again, they immediately had problems. I, for one, couldn't display the main lobby correctly. My friend Stacey couldn't even log in.

This morning my buddy Shamus ran into problems using Hero Poker, one of the Merge skins. He tweeted:

Merge is so very screwed up right now. Here's how my SNG is going... we're in Level 6 http://t.co/H5jFvakg @heropoker @carbonpoker

The good news is after a half-hour I am leading the SNG currently, with none of us having played a hand. @heropoker @carbonpoker

Erm, I just went from 1st to last. Somebody is playing my stack. What applesauce. @heropoker @carbonpoker

SNG finally shut down... says $ refunded. All at cash tables complaining about various applesauce. Whatta mess. @heropoker @carbonpoker

In spite of that, Josie and I decided, perhaps foolishly, to try to play Merge's daily $11 HORSE tournament. She will be in town in a couple of weeks, and there will likely be some mixed-game shenanigans at some point, so she needs more practice with games other than hold'em.

My table was going fine, in technical terms. Josie's wasn't. It was slow as molasses, and it looked to be more of a software or server problem than anything that could be blamed on the players. E.g., hands would take forever to clear off the table after the pot was awarded.

She started out strong, while I started out with everything going wrong. So of course she offered a last-longer bet when she was already up 1875 to my 1341. I accepted it, because, apparently, I'm a sick, degenerate gambler.

Then she watched in horror as I mounted a comeback. I rivered a ace-high flush (crubs, obv) in a five-way pot in stud/8 when nobody had a low, and scooped a monster. This was followed immediately by making a wheel on 5th and scoring a double elimination super-scooper-dooper. Those two hands propelled me well above Josie's stack, and she was trembling in fear:

But then--disaster:

WTF?

A few minutes later, this email showed up in my inbox:

As Shamus says, applesauce.

We thought about trying another SNG, but while browsing for one, it looked like they were in the process of shutting everything down. There were very few games with "registering" status. My guess is that right about now they're offline completely, or about to be.

While I'm complaining about their software bugs, I might as well also complain about some features of the new redesign. They have a few nice improvements, such as a double slider for setting the upper and lower limits of buy-ins for tournaments that you're interested in playing. But they also made it harder to find some customization features. And what used to be a one-button click to see the previous hand is now completely hidden. Josie pointed it out to me. You click on the tournament number in the upper left-hand corner of the game--which is not marked in any way as having this function until you mouse over it--and it brings up a cascade of folders from your hard drive where the hand histories are stored:

(Note that they even got the date wrong. Josie checked, and hers correctly showed 6/6/12. No, there is nothing wrong with the date and time settings on my computer. No, I have no idea why it would be right for one player and wrong for another.)

If you click on any hand number, up pops that hand history, in the same format as they have always used. But it takes a lot more work, time, and thought to get at it than it used to. This is an improvement?

They really screwed the pooch on this software "upgrade."

Josie, again

Josie and I played some more Sunday afternoon. I told her I wasn't planning to post about the results--and it was the truth, I wasn't planning to. But I changed my mind. It was only a $5 single-table SNG, with nothing on the line between us for lasting longer except pride. But I played so well that, gosh darn it, I just have to crow a little itty bit.

Josie was hit by the deck early on, achieving the first knockout when her pocket jacks flopped a set. Meanwhile, I was going the opposite direction, with nothing working out right. She was one of the chip leaders through most of the tournament, while I was scratching and clawing to avoid elimination. It wasn't looking good for me to outlast somebody who usually had a stack several times the size of mine.

But I hung in there, didn't panic, let the big stacks get bigger as they knocked out the other shorties. I was still short on the bubble, and it wasn't clear I would cash. But then Josie knocked somebody out in 4th place and I was at least into the money.

The other guy with us in the end was a total donkey, and he spewed chips off to me so badly that I took over the chip lead for a while.

Did it annoy Josie that "Fatboy 137" (his screen name) was making me healthy again? You could say that. I think she won't mind me quoting this snippet of a rant from the chat we had going on the side:

I cannot FUCKING BELIEVE that you are the chip leader.
I dominated that game from the start
seriously
thats effing crazy
and that fat boy sucks at poker
no wonder hes givng you chips hand over fist

Heh heh heh!

But in spite of the unfairness of it all, Josie took out fatboy with this hand:

Game #56077281-118: Racoon Room - No Limit Holdem Tournament - 200.00/400.00

Seat #3: fatboy137 (BB), $2307.00

Seat #4: VeryJosie (D), $6906.00

Seat #8: Rakewell0 (SB), $3612.00

*** Blinds ***

Rakewell0 posts the small blind of 200.00

fatboy137 posts the big blind of 400.00

*** Pre-Flop ***

Rakewell0 got hole cards [ Ah 7d ]

VeryJosie raises with 800.00

Rakewell0 folds

fatboy137 goes all-in with 2307.00

VeryJosie calls 1907.00

fatboy137 shows [ 4d 4s ]

VeryJosie shows [ 6c 7c ]

*** Flop *** Pot: 5614

[ Qd 3c 9s ]

*** Turn *** Pot: 5614

[ Qd 3c 9s ] [ Ts ]

*** River *** Pot: 5614

[ Qd 3c 9s ] [ Ts ] [ 6d ]

fatboy137 is out

VeryJosie wins 5689.00

(Side note: I know that text hand histories are both difficult and mind-numbing to read. But I spent over an hour looking for a way to convert Merge Network hand histories to animation, and found none. If there's a better solution than this, let me know, because this sucks.)

So then we were heads-up, Josie having more than a 3:1 chip lead, me starting with less than eight big blinds. But I doubled up on the second hand:

Game #56077281-120: Racoon Room - No Limit Holdem Tournament - 200.00/400.00

Seat #4: VeryJosie (D SB), $9888.00

Seat #8: Rakewell0 (BB), $2962.00

*** Blinds ***

VeryJosie posts the small blind of 200.00

Rakewell0 posts the big blind of 400.00

*** Pre-Flop ***

Rakewell0 got hole cards [ Ac 4c ]

VeryJosie raises with 1037.00

Rakewell0 goes all-in with 2962.00

VeryJosie calls 2325.00

VeryJosie shows [ Qs Js ]

Rakewell0 shows [ Ac 4c ]

*** Flop *** Pot: 6924

[ 4h Ks As ]

*** Turn *** Pot: 6924

[ 4h Ks As ] [ Kc ]

*** River *** Pot: 6924

[ 4h Ks As ] [ Kc ] [ 3c ]

Rakewell0 wins 6774.00

That got us to basically even. Nine boring hands later, this happened:

Game #56077281-129: Racoon Room - No Limit Holdem Tournament - 200.00/400.00

Seat #4: VeryJosie (BB), $6751.00

Seat #8: Rakewell0 (D SB), $6099.00

*** Blinds ***

Rakewell0 posts the small blind of 200.00

VeryJosie posts the big blind of 400.00

*** Pre-Flop ***

Rakewell0 got hole cards [ Td 8h ]

Rakewell0 raises with 1000.00

VeryJosie calls 600.00

*** Flop *** Pot: 2200

[ Js 8c Jc ]

VeryJosie bets 1025.00

Rakewell0 calls 1025.00

*** Turn *** Pot: 4250

[ Js 8c Jc ] [ Ad ]

VeryJosie checks

Rakewell0 checks

*** River *** Pot: 4250

[ Js 8c Jc ] [ Ad ] [ 8d ]

VeryJosie checks

Rakewell0 bets 2250.00

VeryJosie folds

Rakewell0 shows [ Td 8h ]

Rakewell0 wins 6350.00

Now I was the one with the substantial chip lead. But Josie took a chunk of it back here:

Game #56077281-135: Racoon Room - No Limit Holdem Tournament - 200.00/400.00

Seat #4: VeryJosie (BB), $3876.00

Seat #8: Rakewell0 (D SB), $8974.00

*** Blinds ***

Rakewell0 posts the small blind of 200.00

VeryJosie posts the big blind of 400.00

*** Pre-Flop ***

Rakewell0 got hole cards [ Kc 7d ]

Rakewell0 raises with 1000.00

VeryJosie calls 600.00

*** Flop *** Pot: 2200

[ 8s 6h Ts ]

VeryJosie goes all-in with 3276.00

Rakewell0 folds

VeryJosie mucks [ ]

VeryJosie wins 5326.00

Which left me with a much smaller lead, until I got her to raise-fold twice by putting in all-in three-bets:

Game #56077281-138: Racoon Room - No Limit Holdem Tournament - 200.00/400.00

Seat #4: VeryJosie (D SB), $5301.00

Seat #8: Rakewell0 (BB), $7549.00

*** Blinds ***

VeryJosie posts the small blind of 200.00

Rakewell0 posts the big blind of 400.00

*** Pre-Flop ***

Rakewell0 got hole cards [ Ad 9s ]

VeryJosie raises with 1250.00

Rakewell0 goes all-in with 7549.00

VeryJosie folds

Rakewell0 mucks [ Ad 9s ]

Rakewell0 wins 9249.00

Game #56077281-150: Racoon Room - No Limit Holdem Tournament - 300.00/600.00

Seat #4: VeryJosie (D SB), $4576.00

Seat #8: Rakewell0 (BB), $7924.00

*** Blinds ***

VeryJosie posts the small blind of 300.00

Rakewell0 posts the big blind of 600.00

*** Pre-Flop ***

Rakewell0 got hole cards [ 5h 5s ]

VeryJosie raises with 1575.00

Rakewell0 goes all-in with 7924.00

VeryJosie folds

Rakewell0 mucks [ 5h 5s ]

Rakewell0 wins 10199.00

Now I had about 90% of the chips in play and could taste the win. Not so fast, pal, sez Josie. She shoved a bunch of times when I had such crappy cards I felt I couldn't take the risk. So my lead got whittled back down to about 2.5:1 when the next big chip movement occurred:

Game #56077281-155: Racoon Room - No Limit Holdem Tournament - 300.00/600.00

Seat #4: VeryJosie (BB), $3651.00

Seat #8: Rakewell0 (D SB), $8849.00

*** Blinds ***

Rakewell0 posts the small blind of 300.00

VeryJosie posts the big blind of 600.00

*** Pre-Flop ***

Rakewell0 got hole cards [ 8c As ]

Rakewell0 goes all-in with 8849.00

VeryJosie goes all-in with 3651.00

VeryJosie shows [ Ts Ad ]

Rakewell0 shows [ 8c As ]

*** Flop *** Pot: 13400

[ Qd Th 4c ]

*** Turn *** Pot: 13400

[ Qd Th 4c ] [ Qh ]

*** River *** Pot: 13400

[ Qd Th 4c ] [ Qh ] [ 3d ]

Rakewell0 wins 4898.00

VeryJosie wins 8602.00

Dammit! She won't die! And now I'm the one in jeopardy again! But I won't die easily, either:

Game #56077281-159: Racoon Room - No Limit Holdem Tournament - 300.00/600.00

Seat #4: VeryJosie (BB), $6302.00

Seat #8: Rakewell0 (D SB), $6198.00

*** Blinds ***

Rakewell0 posts the small blind of 300.00

VeryJosie posts the big blind of 600.00

*** Pre-Flop ***

Rakewell0 got hole cards [ 9s Jd ]

Rakewell0 calls 300.00

VeryJosie checks

*** Flop *** Pot: 1200

[ 9d 2d 5h ]

VeryJosie checks

Rakewell0 bets 800.00

VeryJosie calls 800.00

*** Turn *** Pot: 2800

[ 9d 2d 5h ] [ 8c ]

VeryJosie checks

Rakewell0 bets 2100.00

VeryJosie calls 2100.00

*** River *** Pot: 7000

[ 9d 2d 5h ] [ 8c ] [ Kd ]

VeryJosie checks

Rakewell0 checks

*** Showdown *** Pot: 7000

VeryJosie shows [ 2c 7h ]

Rakewell0 shows [ 9s Jd ]

Rakewell0 wins 7100.00

That put me back in the driver's seat, and set up the final showdown:

Game #56077281-161: Racoon Room - No Limit Holdem Tournament - 300.00/600.00

Seat #4: VeryJosie (BB), $3402.00

Seat #8: Rakewell0 (D SB), $9098.00

*** Blinds ***

Rakewell0 posts the small blind of 300.00

VeryJosie posts the big blind of 600.00

*** Pre-Flop ***

Rakewell0 got hole cards [ 4d 4s ]

Rakewell0 goes all-in with 9098.00

VeryJosie goes all-in with 3402.00

VeryJosie shows [ Kh Jc ]

Rakewell0 shows [ 4d 4s ]

*** Flop *** Pot: 13400

[ 7s 5h Tc ]

*** Turn *** Pot: 13400

[ 7s 5h Tc ] [ As ]

*** River *** Pot: 13400

[ 7s 5h Tc ] [ As ] [ 8s ]

VeryJosie is out

Rakewell0 is out

Rakewell0 wins 5396.00

Rakewell0 wins 8104.00

And that was all she wrote.

As I said, I was pretty pleased with myself for hanging in there so long, striking at pretty much all the right times (after the first few hands I played went bad), and getting fatboy to donate most of his stack to me.

Josie played well, too.* In fact, I think the only fair way to describe the overall story is that she crushed the game for the first 80% of it, then I rallied at the end just enough to snatch a W from her.

Things went less for both of us in the rematch. Josie was first out when her 9-9 ran into my A-A. I survived just long enough for the 3rd-place min-cash. Meh, but I'll take it.

Josie was much less trash-talky today than yesterday; she only called me a whore eight times (by actual count). Maybe it was her Sunday church-going good behavior. But she was actually very nice and complimentary to me (in between blasts of "WHORE!"), which made the whole thing a fun, enjoyable time, and would have been so even if the outcome had been different.

(EDIT: Josie's account of the game is here.)

*The only time I thought she made a clear mistake was when we were three-handed. She raised, I shoved, and she folded, but stack sizes were such that she really should have called with whatever she had. (To quote the great line from Joe Sebok's WSOP final table commentary when Darvin Moon made an eye-poppingly bad fold, she should have called even if all she was holding was "a Snickers wrapper and a tarot card.")

"Get ready for a butt kicking"

That right there is what Josie said upon accepting my suggestion of a little heads-up poker this afternoon.

We didn't make any side bets on the outcome, but decided on a best-of-seven series of $10 heads-up SNGs on Black Chip Poker.

But I quickly took down the first two matches--including an epic comeback from a short stack in game #2--prompting Josie to tell me, "I dislike you very very much." (This is on top of her calling me a whore practically every time I won a hand.)

She won game #3 by hitting a backdoor flush draw after all the chips were in. I guess for some people that's the only way they can win. I'm just sayin'.

I took #4, then she won #5 when my computer suddenly crashed and I lost a bunch of chips while offline trying to revive the stupid beast. Again, for some people that's what it takes for them to win at poker.

But with the computer recovered, I won game #6, our longest of the bunch. Which, for those keeping track, means that I won the series by the extremely appropriate score of 4-2. Cuz that's just how I roll. Or I should say, that's just how I roll over Josie.

If that's a "butt kicking," I guess I'm a masochist, because I liked it.

Josie...

...has a very important story to tell you about a little online poker bet that went down between us today:

http://veryjosie.blogspot.com/2012/04/my-ass-hurts.html

I cashed in one of the two SNGs we were playing, but outlasted her in both of them.

Whom did Josie meet?

OK, readers, which of you will confess to being the Grump reader in this story from Very Josie?

Anyway, I hadn't been playing many hands because the cards were shiat and then I got the mighty 2-4. Now IF I want to play the 2-4 I go in raising. I don't want to be up against other low cards. What I'm looking for is that low flop and it's only good if my fishponents have high cards....so I go in raising. So I raise it up in 2 off the button to 3 times the BB...betting 300. One guy reraises me to 800, 500 on top. Fawk. Everyone folds and fuck it I call. Either I hit the flop or I don't. Bingo! Flop is 2-4-10. I check, he bets, I raise. Turn is a jack. I bet and he calls. River is an ace and I'm not loving this anymore so I check and he checks behind me. He flips over 9-9 and my 2 pair wins. Yay, right? Except the whiner, who wasn't even in the hand, just cannot get over what happened. He just goes on and on about how I called the raise preflop with that hand. I ignore him for a while, but he literally goes on for over 5 minutes about it. Finally I explain that I had 300 in there and 500 wasn't enough to make me fold. He says he didn't realize that I was the original raiser. Okay, whatev. If you're going to bitch and moan you should really pay attention to what you're moaning about. And then the biatch says "You probably didn't even know you were playing a famous hand. (!)

What?

He says "I follow this guy on Twitter. Poker Grump! He's amazing...blah blah blah. He plays that hand you know?"

LOL I tell him that YES I've heard of Poker Grump too. And then he waxes on about how amazing his blog is. I suppose there's no accounting for taste Yes, I did agree with him. Then I'm like....so you read Poker Grump regularly? And he says that yes he does. He says that the poker world on the internet is a small one and everyone reads Poker Grump.

Hmmmm I was tempted to say something like, did you read about this girl Very Josie....Poker Grump made her his bitch? It was right on the tip of my tongue, but what point would it serve other than to point out I was Poker Grump's bitch. Is that a good thing? I think not.

Time to fess up, whoever you are.

Josie has a very important message for you all

Go see it here.