LOST and Poker

The best show on television will air it's seventh episode tonight and I'm looking forward to it. In honor of the odds my friend Keith and his kidney stones and LOST blog odds (Keith's blog link), I'm going to assess my own odds. Oh neat, I have KK in a sit n go. Maybe I'll inject some hands in while I'm writing this from the two $225 sit n gos. OK maybe that was a terrible sign of bad luck. I just pushed for 10 BB with KJ suited on the cutoff and got called by AJ gg in one sit n go.

Anyway, LOST odds are as follows (spoilers in LOST and you don't want the best show spoiled now do you)

Odds to be part of the Oceanic Six (We already know Kate, Sayid, Jack, Hurley and I think Aaron, so his odds are reflected in that)

Desmond: 80 - 1 Aaron: 4 - 7 Claire: 50 - 1
Locke: 80 - 1 Rose: 40 - 1 Juliet: 192 - 1
Jin: 3 - 1 Sun: 15 - 1 Sawyer: 90- 1
Vincent: 8000000 - 1 Bernard: 40 - 1 Charlie 9000000000000000- 1

Sun and Jin are a packaged deal in most things, but Sun is pregnant on an island where pregnant women die. Charlie is dead, Vincent is a dog, Desmond is a potential dark horse candidate for the spy. Locke is most likely tied to the island forever. Claire is a high odds candidate because Aaron is not with here assuming she is on the island. Rose and Bernard are fake. Sawyer is highly unlikely to be the candidate because he has made it clear he doesn't trust anybody and doesn't want to leave.

Odds to be the mole on the boat.

Michael: 2 to 1
Desmond: 5 to 1
Sayid: 20 to 1

These are the real only options.

Poker is real frustrating and I just busted in 8th and 9th in the two sit n gos. A clear and stellar performance by me. I have really started to hate sit n gos to be completely honest since I've started to play the step sit n gos. When you get under 10 BB's in a sit n go, there is no way to play post-flop, so it's just luck and a shoving contest. I consistently shove in late position only to run into a monster dominating hand and it just happened again. I think turbo sit n gos are a terrible idea for any player that thinks they have a skill advantage in the game, but who really cares because the game is all luck.

Here is my current problem with the game of poker. There are many instances where no matter what you do, you can't win. Last night was the pinnacle of this comment when I was playing 2/4 NL heads up against a guy that had no speed but 100 MPH. I ended up swinging up 4 buy ins to down 2 buy ins in a period of a little over an hour. When you play heads up for a long time, you can really pick off good reads of how people are playing if they don't properly mix it up. If they don't mix it up enough, the same rules apply to a lot of the betting patterns they exhibit. For example, extremely small or extremely large value bets are almost always the same betting pattern tell of a player. The all-in overshove on the river is one of these tells. The very small value bet could also be a tell. I picked up so much information about my opponent that it was almost impossible for me to not have a significant edge, but when you are playing heads up, you will absolutely not win no matter what you do at least 1 out of 4 times you play. I got set up on a nice 1600 pot to end it all with a flush draw against AA when the AA had a higher flush card and the board went flush card flush card to give him the ace high flush and counterfeit my lower flush and I just quit. Even though the opponent now had 2200 in front of him with over 1400 being his own, I felt the amount of emotional play that I would invoke into the game would not help me. Sometimes, we just have to slow down and cut our losses in this game. It's not that I wouldn't have an edge, but I wouldn't play with a straight mind against this guy. I picked up so many good sized pots with well-timed bluffs and calls only to have it all thrown away in a series of about 3 hands where in one of the 3 I decided to gamble hard as about a 42% underdog. In the other 2 hands, I had my opponent significantly outclassed. The one hand was K9 when I made my standard raise to 12 and was called. The flop came K 3 2 and I was check raised (with this opponent, he really never had the winning hand on a check raise because he refused to mix it up). Instead of pushing, I played it off for value when a non scare card hit the turn maybe an 8 or something he fired the pot and I called. River 2 and he again fired pot and I called to see A2. Now maybe I can make an argument for ending the madness earlier in the hand, but when you against a player that holds the gas down no matter what, I think it's wrong to not let them hang their chips out to dry. At the same time, it's extremely frustrating to not have the deck ever cooperate in situations like this. The game is so unbelievably swingy that it's scary sometimes. One day you can go from being on top of the world to the next day feeling you are significantly outclassed. The only thing to do is to always try to get better and make correct decisions and constantly evaluate if they are correct. I think it's easy to ignore the bad plays we do make sometimes in honor of our own pride. I'm going to evaluate my sit n go strategy and really look if I need to push in these 10 BB spots with some of the hands I have been pushing with. Either way, I still feel that I have been running bad for the last 6-8 months and I'm still hanging in there.