Letters From Iraq

Two posts today hopefully. Later on I will hopefully get a chance to discuss flopping the nuts in no-limit holdem, and maybe one of these days finish up a post on some 5/10 Omaha8 hands that I played (badly).

In the meantime, I heard from my brother again this morning. If you need a refresher on who he is, what he's doing and some of the abbreviations he might use, read the first post in this series.

I'm going to editorialize throughout this one.

Hello everyone,

Well there has bee na few incidents up and over here in Iraq. Thankfull I have not been in any of them or near any of them. But I was friends with a First Lieutenent who was killed from Crazy troop 1/3 Acr. Who was I think 27 years old. [Ed: Ugh. I can't even imagine.] He was killed in Tallifar, which right now is the worst city in Iraq. The news people will thell you different. The only reason it is the worst is because of the snipers the Iraqs have hired. Everyone knows that Iraqi people cant shoot anthing straight, or all the RPG's would have hit us already. [Ed.: Ha!] But a Kiowa helicopter pilots was shot also. I did not know him, but I really appreciate what they do. Whenever I do go out on a convoy, which almost every other day, those pilots fly above us for air coverage. they are a great asset to moving from one destination to the final destination no matter how long it takes.

Right now is the big 1/3 slash everyone else arund, including the Iraqi army, raid on Tallifar. [I had to read this a few times to understand what he meant. 1/3 is, of course, First Squadron, Third Armored Cavalry. He's saying here that 1/3 and the "good" Iraqis are raiding Tallifar.] There will be death. [The bluntness of this statement really struck me.] Sorry to tell you that, but I figure that if you haven't heard from me, it is because the internet goes down every time someone dies. It takes at least 48 hours after the death to get back. up. [This is because the Army imposes a communications blackout until all next-of-kin notifications are complete.] The mission will last at least the next 30 days from yesterday.

I go to FOB Sykes where regiment is every now and then, which is about 10 minutes from Tallifar. It is close enough where if the insurgents fire morter rounds they will hit something on base. I will be careful. But every other time I am in charge of the Dining area of the mess hall on FOB Tiger.(Forward Operating Base)

Yesterday though we had a gun fight right outside our own front gate. These people around here are stupid. Why fight an army that have weapons that can make a hole on you about the size of a basketball. [Again, I had to chuckle at this.] These Iraqis are very stupid. They dont even pull over when they see a M1abram tank. No one got hurt yesterday. But now if the civilians get hurt we have to go to there town and provide first aid to them, and it also includes medivacing them.

I just wanted to give youll a heads up on what is going on in my neck of the sands. [I suppose there are no "woods" over there.] It is getting colder over here.

to my family, I love you all. Mom and Dad, please call Cynthia and remind her about the weekend of the 8 when you fly to Denver. Cynthia will be looking forward to seeing you both. Tom, tell Nicki I said hi and say hi to the kids.
Micki tell Dave isaid hi and also say hi to the girls.
Dave have fun in NY, Cynthia and I will be ther hopefully in the summer.
I Love you all.

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Congratulations

As first reported by Ugarte, hearty congratulations go out to Joaquin on his win of a 42" plasma flat panel television at a freeroll last night celebrating the re-opening of the Near Chinatown card club.

Yours truly went out on the last hand of Level 2, when I got all my chips in as a 4.5-to-1 favorite after the flop and promptly got clusterfucked on the turn. I redeemed myself with one hand (for quick discussion) in the $1/$2 $100-$500 NLHE cash game.

My hand was nearly killed as I had been in the bathroom and the action was just getting to me when I returned to the table. I quickly sat down and did the ol' corner peek: QQ. Nice. Then I took stock of the action:

A LAG in EP had raised to $15.
A player who tended to overplay his hands, immediately to the LAG's left, had reraised to $50.
I had $450 and the button was two seats to my left.

"How much do you have behind?" I asked the reraiser. It was about $85.
"Reraise. $150."

The guy to my immediate left blurted out "Why'd you do that? I was going to do that!" He considered for a moment longer before regretfully folding. Action folded back to the LAG, who also regretfully folded. Even LAGs have a tipping point, I guess.

Back to the reraiser. "I think you have me beat. But I call."

We kept our cards hidden until the flop came out A-Q-3, at which point I flipped my set. He showed TT, and although he caught one of his tens on the turn, the case ten was MIA on the river.

Now, what makes the hand at all noteworthy was what the LAG said after it was all over: "$150? Why would you raise so high?"

It should be obvious, I think.

A) I don't want any weak suited aces (basically, anything below AQ) being at all tempted to come into this pot. In fact, the button claimed that he had AJ and the LAG said he had a weak suited ace in diamonds, two of which flopped.

B) I'd really like to be heads up with the reraiser. As mentioned earlier, he had exhibited a tendency to overplay his hands, so I was reasonably confident that I was way ahead. You can't win every time you're a 4.5-to-1 favorite (see above), but you can't go wrong by getting all your chips in as a 4.5-to-1 favorite every time.

C) On the off-chance that the reraiser decided to fold, I still stood to pick up a net $68 pot. Nothing wrong with that.

What were my other choices on this hand? Either:

1) smooth call. Given the "call any raise" nature of the table, that was not a scenario I wanted to see, because we easily could have been 4 or 5 to the flop. Big pairs don't play well in multi-way pots, especially a hand like QQ, which is going to be "overflopped" by a king or an ace over 40% of the time.

2) raise a smaller amount -- $100 or $125. This would have effectively put the reraiser all-in if he called, while still making it difficult for anyone else to call without a hand. I don't like minimum-raising, however, and given the "call any raise" nature of the table, it felt like a better move to make a significant reraise, such that really only one person would be tempted to call.

A little footnote to the hand is that the player on my left folded JJ.

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Blue Parrot Extravaganza

"Watch this, Lis. You can actually pinpoint the second when his heart rips in half."
--Bart Simpson, from ep. "I Love Lisa"

There was no come in her betting. And that's "come" spelled c-u-m, and "betting" spelled b-e-d-d-i-n-g.
--Rick

Let's go one thing out of the way up front: thanks to Coach for tipping me off to this op-ed piece from the Sunday NYT on New York card clubs. None of what's discussed is really "new ground", but it's nice to see it get a little print from the mainstream media -- even if the author is a college history professor.

Moving along...

In a previous installment of this blog, a long time ago on a computer far away, I mentioned my rising levels of apathy regarding reading and writing about people's live play experiences. Analysis is great, and I think individual hand analysis (micro analysis, if you will) has always been one of my strengths. Macro analysis -- more overreaching poker concepts -- has been more fleeting for me. I do want to get back to more micro analysis, starting with some hands of 5/10 O8 that I played last week on Full Tilt at a table with Erik Seidel.

Until that happens, despite my professed apathy for such tales, I want to direct readers to Pauly's blog where he will no doubt soon post his latest poker recap of a night at The Blue Parrot. With Rick, Pauly and Swish all in town, and Ugarte making a return visit to The Blue Parrot after his previous exile, the stars were aligned for a memorable night. It delivered some classics, including:

* a dial-a-shot from Internet Celebrity AlCantHang, who spotted Pauly in ESPN's broadcast of the 2005 WSOP Event#2 that premiered last night;
* a few raunchy jokes, complete with self-molestation, from Julie (I really, really hope Pauly has a picture of this);
* Swish!;
* a king-high straight flush;
* the smallest roach in the world;
* Rick, who managed to pocket almost $300 in profit in a $100 buy-in dealer's choice game;
* the late night tilting of Ferrari when his AA was cracked by Om's Q2o on a board of 2-5-8-J-Q;

and many other sordid tales. To read all about them, hit the blog of our kind Doctor.

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Letters From Iraq

I'm still here, trying to figure out the next direction for this poker blog. I have a few poker-related ideas, but time has been a short commodity of late. In the meantime, I thought it might be worthwhile to create a series of recurring posts of emails from an actual soldier in Iraq -- my brother. Consider it a human interest series, if you want.

First, some explanations. My brother is stationed in Fort Carson, Colorado, "the Mountain Post", with the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment (3ACR), which consists of over 5,000 soldiers plus units attached. The regiment is broken down into several squadrons.

Regimental Squadron is at the top, and under it are the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and Support Squadrons. In each of the numbered squadrons are units or troops, namely: Headquarters Headquarters Troop (hello, redundancy), Apache Troop, Bandit, Crazyhorse, Dragon, etc. This is a bit different from aviation and infantry units, which are called companies: alpha company, bravo, charlie, delta, and so forth. "The Cav is an entirely different beast", supposedly.

All troops but HHT are considered "line troops". My brother, along with all of HHT, supports the line troops. At this point, his rank is some sort of sergeant, his unit designation is "HHT 1/3ACR", and his MOS ("military occupational specialty", I believe) is cook -- but he can be out with the line troops on missions at any time. He left for his second tour through Iraq in March 2005; the first tour was from approximately May 2003, after the initial offensive, to April 2004, just before the insurgency really started getting bloody.

Anyway, here's his first email upon returning to Iraq after two weeks' leave in the US:

hello to all,

Well, I have internet accessability in my room and I talked to Cynthia at 0200 this morning. Right now it is 1945 Iraq time, which is 0945 Colorado time. I am doing good here, I no longer go out on missions anymore. Well so far. Leave was excellent. Sorry mom and dad, i did not call you before i went back. Cynthia and I went white water rafting and also went up to Cheyenne Wyoming for Frontier Days which is professional bull riding. But we had lots of fun. Mom and Dad I told Cynthia about the weekend of 8 September. Just call her and remind her, dhe would love to see you all.

If you look at a map of Iraq and look for Mosul. I am 2 hours west of Mosaul in the Sinjar mountain area. Its about 45 minutes from the Syrian border. Very nice weather in the mountains.

Right now i am in charge of the Dining area and all the cooks. My E-6 SSG williams is in charge of rations, and SFC Zahorsky stays in his room most of the time expect to go to meetings.

I love you'll and will write back whenever I have new news.

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Where Do We Go From Here?

Ever have a night at the tables when you just want to puke, given how badly you played? Tonight was one of those nights for me. Two hands played so poorly that I just wanted to retch after I left the club. I was $125 for the session before the hands happened, so the net hit to me for the night was only $100 in the hole, but god did I stink it up. Maybe the sting of these nights is necessary to keep the ego in check. Doesn't make them any easier to swallow though.

Meanwhile, I'm at a bit of a crossroads here. My poker playing has gone waaaaaaay down as other things have picked up my time. I'm tired of writing about my own experiences because, frankly, I'm tired of reading about other people's experiences. Analysis is good, but these days I need something more than just "we were at the home game / club / casino, here's how the hands went down". I read HDouble and DoubleAs all the time, because they really are two thinkers, but I'm not playing nearly enough to be writing my own thoughts like that. The niche that I've carved out -- the NYC scene -- is flagging also. Tonight was my first appearance at any club in over a month. I haven't had my ear to the NYC scene because half the time I haven't even been in NYC.

Until I figure it out, I think this space is going to languish.

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