No, sorry, this is a poker-related post, not a political post.

All the Party sites run into problems with hand histories from time to time. You request them, they don’t come. Last Sunday this happened after I’d lost a bunch of money and before I made it back, which screwed up my stats. Anyway, I wrote to MultiPoker customer service about the issue and here’s what they said:

As per our records we see that the Hand Histories were successfully sent from our Data base. We request you to check in your bulk or junk mail folder to see if you have received them there. If you have not received them, we request you to add info@multipoker.com to your e-mail account address book and then re-validate your e-mail address.

Bullshit. Hand histories and customer service messages both come from info@multipoker.com. How in the hell could I receive his message and not the hand histories if the problem was a bulk-mail/spam-mail folder? Besides, I don’t use webmail, so they can bite my crank. I’ve been waiting for a chance to say that. Anyway, my guess is that their server’s mail service just stopped working and they’re not being upfront about it.

Just booked a room for mid-November at the Tuscany, which is a block and a half off the Strip (i.e., halfway to California). I’m really looking forward to this. I’ve never played poker in Vegas, and my B&M experience is limited to two sorties to Hollywood Park about a year ago. So any advice, tips, recommendations, other synonyms you can offer will be quite welcome. For instance, which casinos have the shortest waits, the most tourists, the most schooling (implicit collusion), the best drink service, the most professional staff, smoking at the tables, etc.? How much do you tip the dealer/cocktail waitress to make him/her your best friend? Good experiences, bad experiences, whatever.

Multipoker stopped sending me hand histories some time Sunday evening, so I’ve decided not to play at the Party skins while they work this out. Instead, I played 4 SNGs at Pacific Poker and placed in the money in 3 of them (2nd – $40, 3rd – $20, and 5th – $2). Too bad the one I busted out of cost me $33 to play. So I’m only up $8 for the night. Um, never slowplay a set. Sometimes you have to relearn this lesson the hard way.

I think Grubby was saying that the games at Pacific are really soft. He’s right. I’ve never done this well in Party SNGs. Plus I’m playing with one of their sign up bonuses, so it’s not even my money. You should check it out.

Only played another 634 hands of $25 PL this past week, though part of that is due to the 200 hands of $50 PL I played and the fact that I don’t get to include any Labor Day play in these totals. Since my last update, the win rate has settled down to a more than respectable 13.85BB/100 hands for my 2,468-hand history. Just wait until the beats and dead-end draws start coming down fast and furious. You’ll see me grateful for 1.39BB/100 hands when I’ve got 10,000 hands to review.

Editor’s note: I updated some of the numbers (but not the text) after MultiPoker customer service finally sent me my hand history (as an attached Word doc!). Looks much better than before–in fact, so much so that the title of this post doesn’t really make sense. Ah well. Just goes to show that you need to have a lot of hands in your PT database to get any kind of meaningful results

The thing about blogs is that you are more or less making public declarations. And in my mind, one should try to keep one’s word, stand by one’s statements, etc. For instance, if I talk about not ending a single day with a net loss in pot limit, well by God I’m going to play until I make it happen!

And this, boys and girls, is the foundation for a proper full-blown tilt session.

So after losing $48 in the $50 PL games (I think I’ll avoid these and opt for NL in the future), I was determined to make it back later in the day. I did some studying (catching up) and took a 30 minute nap that stretched into 80 minutes. Then I got up, poured myself some whiskey, had a smoke, and got to work. It took me 3 hours and another glass or two of Knob Creek to make it back at the $25 PL tables, and now I’m up $2 for the day. Considering that I have more studying and assignments to do, that’s probably a good cutoff point.

Oh, did I say something about tilt? I said it was the foundation for a tilt session, which is what the earlier losses might have put me on. But taking the study, er, poker break and the nap helped me put that behind me. Good.

With yesterday’s monster pot, my bankroll is now looking slightly more respectable. The question is, what do I do with it now that I have it? If it’s still there when I go to Vegas in November, I’m taking it with me. But in the meantime…