Chuckler’s Musings

So I’d been reading this poker book ‘Big Deal’, which I bought Chuckler for his birthday - primarily so he’d have something interesting to read on the plane but then I made it all too obvious I wanted to read it, forcing him to finish it quickly and graciously lend it to me before he left - which is a good blend of poker stories, history and advice. Having finished the book in about two days, I was clearly in need of some poker.

Given the problems we have had getting a game organised and my lack of access to non-work high speed net, the next best thing was a tournament on the PSP. Although I’ve put in a lot of hours on PSP poker in the couple of weeks I’ve had it, I’d never come close to winning a tournament until last night. I had however, finished just in the money in a few hold’em tournaments, which had given me enough cash to play all the available hold’em tournaments for the year. This meant I was left with playing things like a Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo tournament, which I would usually avoid like the plague.

I’m not sure whether I’d sub-consciously picked up tips from the book, or whether I was just lucky, but I found myself with a pretty decent stack of chips for most of the game, which saw me into the money (top 20 out of 153) and then to the final table. By this time, it was past Rove O’Clock and Lara had fallen asleep. I kept playing until the short stacks were knocked out and there were just four of us left, with me having the least chips of the four. I went and had a shower and tried to sleep - impossible with the PSP sitting just on the bedside table. So I played on, surviving while the 4th and 3rd players were knocking out, leaving me way behind (about 5:1 behind) the other guy when we went heads-up. I thought I’d be out quickly, but managed to claw may way up to about even and then moved ahead - this can take a long time when playing Pot Limit Hi-Lo - and finished victorious just before 1AM.

Then Charlotte woke up at about 2:30 and we fought to get her back to sleep, which took until about 4AM, somewhat deflating the victory, especially as none of the $300K or so I won is real money.

Even so, the question remains, has reading the book improved my poker-playing (noting also that Chuckler had read/was reading it just before his recent wins) or was it purely coincidence?