The Return of the 4/8 Superstar

Hello friends. Not sure how many people will see this or care, but I plan on playing live once or twice a week and posting again. I took a solid chunk of time off from poker and now I feel ready to come back.

Aside from forum trips I haven't played much poker, and didn't really start to miss it until recently. When I was playing regularly it just felt like the games weren't good anymore. Everyone was nitting it up, my games were breaking early, my average table stakes were plumetting from 15/30 to 9/18 down to 6/12. It just felt like no one had any money to lose, so they tried harder to keep it.

On top of that I was busy working a couple different jobs, juggling friendships and relationships, trying new things. Poker just kind of got shuffled to the back. I don't think I missed out on too much. The last few weeks I've been playing more and easing my way back into the mix, and the same names and faces are still there. Part of me thinks that is another reason I stopped going.

Seeing the same people playing cards day in and day out kind of makes me depressed for them. Is this all they do? I remember thinking to myself "man, I'm here at least a couple times a week, usually rotating a few different days and I ALWAYS see this person and that person...do they ever leave?" Some are able to play for a living and that's cool, good for them, those aren't the ones I'm talking about. I know there are some people who are losing players and play everyday, how are they able to continually light money on fire and be able to come back the next day? Rich family? Rich dead uncle? Meh, it's not any of my business really, but there were times I couldn't help but wonder about a certain person's family, friends, and wonder if poker was eating a hole in this person's life.

I'll stop being the negative nancy, debby downer blog now, but I wanted to be honest in my first post back. No biting my tongue, no holding back. If you're going to read this, you're going to get 100% truth; no bullshit, no sugar coating, no fairy tales.

I'll be playing most of my poker at Capitol Cardroom, located in downtown Sac. The most likely stakes will be 4/8-Full Kill, 6/12-Full kill, and maybe some NL sprinkled in if it looks like the games are good. Cap is the most likely option because of location (about a 10 minute drive from my place), great food, fantastic dealers (lightning fast ftw), good action 24/7 (there's almost always a good game to be found) and i'm familiar with a majority of the floor, dealers and some of the players.

Other locations might include Cache Creek and Lucky Derby. Cache is home to my favorite 4/8-kill game of all time, as the players are much more loose/passive than your average Capitol player. I'm assuming that's because you get a lot more pure gamblers wandering to the poker room from the nearby casino slots and pit; at Capitol most people are there to play cards.

Derby has a decent 5/10 full kill Omaha 8 or better game I liked to play back in the day, but the game was pretty slow and you'd get a lot of regs playing at times. Back when I went card dead in that game, it felt like eternal damnation. Though a few times the games were REALLY GOOD, like crazy goooot, so it might be worth a look if I'm ever in the area.

My short term goal for this new build is to play solid, fundamental poker. I want to make as many good decisions as I possibly can then let the results figure themselves out from there. I've played and studied LHE for a little over seven years now, so all the correct decisions should be somewhere in my brain, now it's just up to me to execute them.

Look for a few new updates this week, as I'll go back the last couple of weeks and talk about some sessions I've had and some big pots I've been involved in. That's all for now, thanks for reading, and it feels good to be back and excited about poker again.