When the levee breaks

So it started raining today. It rained all day and has continued through the night, it is currently 4:16 A.M. as I write this, and it seems to have no intention of letting up.

They say that in Korea it rains like this for days and days in the summer, and when it does, it is just about hell. I can see that, it's only 64 degrees out (apparently) and 100% humidity. It feels like its about 85. I'm writing this in boxers with the window open, sweating.

Icky.

That being said, it has inspired me to play a 12 string version of 'When the Levee Breaks' by Led Zeppelin with a slide. The first verse came quickly:

If it keeps on rainin, the levee's gonna break,
If it keeps on rainin, the levee's gonna break,
The jets keep flyin but the tools all washed away...

Other than that, yeah, its been a while, but i'm still not terribly interesting.
I decided to save up for a 12 string acoustic guitar(the above is in anticipation) after much thinking. Reason being is that I already have an awesome acoustic guitar and 3 electric guitars, and it wouldn't make much sense to buy something I already have. I could get a 12 string electric guitar, but play it on what? I guess I could get a 7 string Ibanez, but I don't play heavy metal, and thus don't necessitate the lower string. No, a 12 string acoustic is both practical for here and forethought for being the next logical step as far as a guitar purchase. There are other guitars that I would also like to own, but to do so would take away from the other guitars I already own.


Phew, enough guitarness. Poker recently hasn't been great. Usually I can wait out an entire game playing decent cards, but lately the decent cards don't come as often, and when they do, they get counterfeit by lesser hands. Another problem is that I can usually maximize my return in a hand by careful betting, but now everyone knows that when I have a hand, I bet it very well. My best hand last night was 3 of a kind - Nines, and I didn't make terribly much out of it. I was able to extract just about as much as I could out of it, but it didn't really help out. Kinda crappy for 2 hours of poker. Whats worse is even the cards I was folding weren't hitting.

I typically like to just play my cards and stay out of the mind games, but I think soon i'm going to have to start really getting into tells and bluffing again. I used to be able to play many hands without looking at my cards... you only have to show them to take a pot after the river! Its just that playing poker like that can get exhausting and frustrating when people call whenever they have a pair, which is basically the situation here. Its way more exhausting and frustrating when you can't put together two cards to save your life, and when you do, someone gets lucky on the turn or river.

I did introduce another facet to my strategies; playing early hand positions. You see, there are advantages and disadvantages to early position. The largest of the extremes are as follows:

Advantage - Often the first person to bet at a hand will win the hand. This is simply because not everyone has great cards, so you can get them out of a hand before they try to get in it. You're just adding more incentive for them to fold a hand they may not have liked in the first place. You may be betting with nothing but people fold because they have nothing as well, or not enough to call a raise with.

Disadvantage - You don't know if anyone has great cards. Nobody has had the opportunity to make a move, and good poker players usually don't look at thier cards until it is their turn to act. This is so they don't give away their hand strength. You may look down and see a semi decent hand like Ace-9 suited and raise it up, all of a sudden there is a reraise and a re-reraise on top of what you put into the pot. Now what do you do?

I definitely tighten my starting hand requirements when there are people to my left that haven't gotten a chance to make a move. If you did play the kind of hand from the second scenario you have to look at a couple different things when there is a bet. How much is the bet against how much you've put in? How much is in the pot already? Is how much more you have to put in versus how much is in the pot a good ratio?

You also have to factor the percentage your hand has of "hitting," that is, how likely it is the cards will give you a winning hand. This is actually easier than it sounds.

There are 52 cards in the deck, and 2 in your hand. So there are 50 cards that we don't know about. After the preflop round of betting, the first three cards hit the board(the flop). Now you have 3 cards that can give you many possibilities. For a flush or a straight you need 5 cards of the same suit or 5 consecutive numbered(or faced) cards. Lets say you have 4 cards to a flush. You have 2 more cards coming, thus 2 more chances to hit your flush. Since there are 13 cards in a suit, you have 9 cards that are in the deck that will grant you the flush. These cards are called outs. Here's the simple part. Off the flop, you have 2 more cards coming, so you have 4% for every out. Since we have 9 outs, for 4% per out, we have a 36% chance of hitting that flush.

Now, we're weighing the percentage to hit against the ratio of how much money you have to put into the pot. Since we have a 36% chance of hitting a flush, it is highly recommended to call up to 36% of the pot. I like to round, so if the pot is 300, we would want to call up to about 100.

You can call more if you like, or you can call less if you like, but if you were to play this system, you would (mathematically) have a higher win to loss ratio.

To elaborate on the preflop starting hand requirements, you have roughly a 40% chance to pair the board(everyone does) with one of your cards, significantly less if you have a pocket pair(two of a kind in your hold cards). So you would be able to call up to 40% with just about anything, but know, again, everyone that is in the hand has those odds. It never fails that a pair of 8s will beat a pair of 7s at the showdown, therefore it is wise to bring cards into the hand that are high enough to win with.

If you can apply these principles to a poker game, you're already better than 95% of poker players out there. Skill-wise anyway... the cards have to fall in your favor and the other player has to be good enough to fold when you want them to and call when you want them to.
Yes, I said GOOD enough. Go out and play some poker and you'll understand what I mean.

Or you could play like Aunt Cory, honestly, that style has quite some merit to it. Oddly enough, based on the first poker scenario, it probably makes more money than it loses.

Ok, enough about poker.

Yay! L sent the PSP game that my Super Wonderful Aunt Cory got me, and I got it today. Now I need to get off my butt and buy a PSP. PSP and a 12 String.

Recap: Rain, 12 string, a whole lot of poker, PSP Game. Aunt Cory.