Running Bad

You'll have to forgive me for not blogging much of late. I've lacked motivation to do much of anything. Life has dealt me cards that have served as a horrible run of late, and I have really been mired in a deep depression, maybe worse than when I went through my divorce. It really seems that every area of my life has been running poorly, and my motivation to write about it has really not been to high. So as I sit and watch the New York Giants and the Washington Redskins battle each other (in a game that I'd rather not be watching, but thanks to Time Warner Cables battle with the NFL, it's the only NFL game being televised at the moment), I thought I would take the opportunity to vent, blog style.

Home life has been stressful on a couple of fronts. I'm more than a little frustrated from the medical stuff with Traci sometimes, and these last few weeks have been relatively good ones. I mean, there hasn't been a regression, but things are for the most part stagnant, and it's endlessly frustrating. I wouldn't wish what she goes through on my worst enemy, and to see her stuck in it, well it hurts. More than I can really express in words. Both of us go through our deserved points of frustration for various aspects of the situation. Again, we continue to hold onto the hope that her body will continue to heal itself, and that hopefully, some form of normalcy will emerge.

In poker, I am continuing to run bad, and I am going through a rut that I've never really quite experienced before. I really feel that I'm playing well, but I'm just having bad results. On Labor day, 4 of us went to the Bike for the Noon'er and I busted in about 70th. I played SUPER tight for the first 4 levels because I caught zero cards. I actually folded every single hand prior to the first break, because I just had absolutely nothing to work with. After the break, I fought my way back to my starting stack, and then began to chip up. I really took advantage of a very unskilled table and was able to increase my starting stack of 4k to over 11k by the time my table broke. But when I moved to my new table, disaster struck in the form of a 3 outer. I called for all of my chips with QQ from the SB to an all-in raise from the cutoff. The BB folded, and when we turned up our cards, I was ahead as my opponent showed Ac-6c. But the Ace of spades on the flop would end my day in non-poetic fashion, and I would head home defeated yet again.

In the TPT, I ran out of luck as I'd chipped up well early, but with 11 players remaining and blinds at 100-200, I got unlucky with KK. I was UTG and opened for a min raise, and then was re-raised to 1200. Action folded to the BB who also called, and I shoved my stack for around 9k when it got to me. The original re-raised tanked for a little bit before letting go of what he said was QQ, and the BB snap called with AA. I was toast in 11th place, and dropped 2 more spots in the TPT leaderboard.

In all, my online play has just headed south for a solid 2 week period, and I'm down more than $300 in the last 2 weeks. It's not so much that I've made really bad plays, as much as it has been I'm seeing myself end up with unfortunate results.

At the home game this past Friday, Robert ran white hot in the end to ship it. I made a move with TT heads up with Robert and he showed A-8os. We were all in pre-flop and the flop came out 5-4-7. The 6c on the turn crushed me, and I was down to the 3 remaining 8's in the deck to chop the pot. But the river was a Tc to give me a set to lose. Robert continued his streak calling an all in by both Andrew and Chris on a board of 7d-7h-5d. Chris showed A-5 for two pair, and Andrew showed 7-6 for a set and a backdoor straight draw. But Robert tossed over Kd-Td for the flush draw and he'd hit it on the turn when the 4d came up. The river was a meaningless Ace, and Robert controlled more than 80% of the chips in play with 4 players remaining, and would cruise to the win.

Finally for me, I was running great in a satellite to the 750k yesterday on tilt, where the top 8 people gained entry to the event. I was 6th in chips with 4k left, and I open shoved from middle position with QQ. The Big blind called with A-7os for 90% of his stack, and the flop hit an Ace again. It's just been that kind of week for me with poker.

I was involved in a pretty in depth discussion about some of my plays in the forum's on the TPT site and on Poker VT, and I'm confident that I made the right plays in each of these situations, but that they just ended poorly for me. A little bit of bad luck.

Here's the end all, I'm in a tough spot. Both emotionally, and financially. I've never really been faced with a point in life quite like this before. I'm really scared for the first time in my life about how things are going to play out. I hope, and hold onto that hope, that things will work out OK in the end. I mean, it's not life my life is peril or anything that serious, but I would really love to have a day without the stresses that life is bringing these days. A day where, everything was just ok.

I'm making an effort to be thankful for all the things that I do have in life. I mean, I still have a roof over my head (thanks in large part to some help financially from the family in helping us pay the rent) and I still have food in the refrigerator (thanks in part to a shopping spree by my former in-laws), and I have friends and family that know exactly where I'm at, and what we're going through. They've opened their hearts, and they've been there for us to the point that I can't begin to express my gratitude for the love that they've shown.

Going through this stuff makes you really appreciate the good times all the more I guess, and long for them. I believe that those times are simply around the corner and that despite the fact that I don't have any clue on how I'm going to get out of what I'm currently stuck in, I have faith that I'll get through it all ok.