Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Karma Connection

It's an online playa's worst nightmare, but I"m sure more than one of you has lived through it. We're like all the kids on Elm Street, except our biggest fear is a connection that goes south as soon as you are nearing a cash in an SnG.
Last night I was the chip leader in a 10-person SnG and coasting to a cash, just waiting for one of the three to get knocked out and also waiting out a bad run of cards, when my computer froze.
I have OS X, so my other programs worked (a friend who was railbirding me chatted merrily away on Yahoo) while my table acted like an episode from the Twilight Zone. No one was moving. The time bar stayed on yellow. Time had no meaning.
Shit!
The blinds at this point were 400-800, so it wouldn't take long for the sharks to agree to fold and knock me outta there and steal my chippies. I quickly said Fuck. Then I logged out, quit my browser, logged back in, dialed up again (listen, all you cable users, I will advance my Internet as soon as we move into a new house, which requires that we sell ours first, I know dial-up is lame but it's all I have right now, I don't want to pay two installation fees) and waited for my 500 MhZ processor to bring back up Safari. I waited, I have to say, rather inpaitently, punching a pillow on the bed in the basement. I would have been able to erase the national debt if we had a swear jar in the house.
I came back to find myself in the BB, with an automatic all-in, less than 500 chips.
And A,A was in my hand.
Praise Jesus.
I won the hand, of course, but that still left me with 1,060, or about one-fifth of my stack pre-fuck-up and an M of less than 1, which Harrington says is, to put it bluntly, not good.
So I had A,6, everyone folded to me, and I push all in, just hoping to steal the huge blinds away from the BB.
He calls.
With A,4.
OK. 2100 now.
Next hand.
A,Q.
I push all in again. I don't mind a call, but even if I don't get one, I'll be up to a somewhat comfortable level again.
Same guy calls.
With K,9.
A,Q flops.
Sweet.
4,200.
Three hands later, I get AA.
Again.
I push.
Someone calls.
He's out.
No, wait, he's not, he has 300 left, in the theme of this SnG. He quickly comes back.
But I'm at 7,200 and back in the lead.
I continue to steal at this point because the others think they need a monster to call with those blinds, which are now at 500-1000. I don't blame them, but ty anyway.
Once the fourth guy finally goes out (finally, did I already say that?), it takes us two hands to get to heads up.
First hand, I have A,J. Guy calls with 10,3.
He gets his 3. I get nothing.
OK. Second hand, he folds, third hand, he folds, so I'm back.
Fifth hand, I have A,J again. He calls after we trade raises and an allin with 8,9.
He gets his 9 on the river. I get nothing.
OK. We're even now.
I have him covered by 15 chips.
He immeaditely goes all in.
I have Q,Q.
I smile and call.
His A,9 does not improve.
I win.
Karma is beautiful.

3 comments:

ROSSI said...

keep going, i too am a low limit player. here is my blog if your interested

www.rossi2005.blogsot.com

TripJax said...

dude, that is crazy.

np, sir.

if you've read me for a while, you'll know i've had some pretty frustrating conncection times in the past. hopefully past me now.

Kent said...

By the way, I'm going to link your blog; maybe some of the handfull of readers I get will like yours too.