Poker is Hard

It's easy when you have J9 against T8 and AhKh and it comes T87 with 2 hearts and your hand holds up. It's easy when you get aces against kings and ace-king. It's easy when you get aces against queens and it's easy when your opponents are folding ace-king to your button raise, as one fellow (actually a good player) did at Canterbury.

It's not so easy when you've got two Swedes and Layne Flack staring you down as you try to bluff with 8 high. It's not so easy to accumulate chips when you get continually reraised and you have nothing. And it's downright hard when you sabotage your own chances by playing afraid and making amateurish mistakes.

I didn't play my best today and I didn't get lucky. I did flop quads twice but there was little I could do to get much out of my opponents. I lost about 20k in the first level and then slowly gained ground back to around 54k when I was moved to a new table, no more Swedes. The new table did have my nemesis from yesterday, Rajj Kattamuri, Kenna James, Clonie Gowen with a big stack, and the legendary Sam Farha tilting off the remains of a once towering stack on my right. None of them really caused a problem for me though - it was this kind-looking older lady who plays a very mean game of poker who busted my ass.