The Good, Bad and Mediocre

Well - good news first...I passed my American Society of Quality Certification exam for Quality Auditors. Way cool. I was very stressed about the exam and passing, as it was not an easy exam. If it had ben memorizing facts and then answering factual questions, I would have been fine....but it was full of questions like, what is the BEST option given this scenerio type of stuff. And then three of the four options are pretty decent and you have to judge which is the best answer in the eyes of the dude that wrote the questions....regardless, I did well enough to pass and I am pretty stoked about the whole thing. Can't wait to tell the bosses here at work.

Mediocre next - played in a 16 man two table shootout last night over at Bishop's house. As always, Bishop and Julie were fantastic hosts. Anyway, was able to win a couple of nice pots off of Bishop and got hiim to lay down a flopped two pair against my AQ when I hit the Q on the flop and moved all in on him...he read my body language as wanting him to call and convinced himself that I had flopped a set, so he folded. I had built a nice stack until my flopped two pair from the BB (5-7) ran into a short stack with an OESD that called my all in bet and hit his straight on the turn....river failed to help and I lost half my stack. I played pretty tight after that, trying to steal pots when I could and stay in the game. The guy that caught the straight draw ended up getting a bunch of chips dumped to him by a couple of short stacks that went all in with stellar hands like A3os and 5-9os on steals when he had something....ended up he and I heads up with him having about a 5-1 chip advantage. I won a couple of pots to get within 3-1 of him before he limped to my BB (2000-4000) and I check with 6-7os to see a flop of J-7-8...I push all in, figuring that he didn't have the jack or he would have pushed my BB (as he had been doing), he debates then calls with 8-2 suited and his pair of eights knock me out of the tourney. In hindsight, i should have raised his limp...but did respect the fact that he could have been baiting with something better than 6-7os...not exactly the powerhouse hand that I would have liked at that point. So...2 hours of live poker and I got my $20 back, so no harm done to the bankroll.

And the Bad - well...the 16 month run is over....my bankroll online is gone. 13 straight months of car payments, a trip to Vegas and numerous other gadgets around the house are all I have left to show for a pretty nice run ove rthe last 16 months. I'm going to take a break from online poker (with the exception of freerolls and such) and focus on getting the house sold and getting into the new place. Hopefully I'll get some expendible cash in the near future....dealing poker or hitting the lottery and will be able to reload without dipping into household funds. So...the run has been fun, but time to take a break from grinding online.

ttfn