It’s official. I’m mediocre. In training terms, I’m at the stage of “conscious competence”, where I need to concentrate and focus on poker to be competent. I can’t casually play (and do three other things) and expect positive results. Played two $20+2s on Saturday and got blown out in both, playing indifferently and half-heartedly. I’m not even sure the second one even happened, I was out so quickly.

I needed to get some dignity back, so I went back to the old reliable .50/1 Omaha8 tables at Empire to make back $20 in a couple of hours. It’s almost like playing Omaha8 is like my minor leagues, where I can work to get my confidence and my “stuff” back. The no fold-em mentality of those tables is a good place for me to get back to playing the percentages, calculating pot odds, and gauging individual betting patterns (calling station, raising maniac, no-free-card players, etc.). I think it was good for me to re-establish some basic poker fundamentals before I go back into the SnGs… or maybe I’ll just stick with the consistently profitable .5/1 Omaha.

Typical hand, I’m UTG with QJTx, call BB, and end up calling two raises preflop. Flop comes KJJ (!) with seven players in. After the blinds check, I checked, wanting to keep everyone in with probably the best hand and presumably the best draw. Everyone else checked too (disappointing, but not surprising). The turn was the case Jack giving me quads. BB bets $1, I call, and see it called by three more, making five seeing the river with me already having the mortal nuts (I had the Q of suit, making the straight flush impossible). Last round (Ten on the river), I check again, someone bets, two callers, I raise and get THREE callers to drag a $25 pot. Each of the callers had a pocket pair (Aces, Queens, Tens), and while I can understand the Aces coming along for the right, the Queens and Tens were absolutely crazy to call in that situation. C’est la vie.

I keep hearing about Pacific, so I moved $100 over with some of my floating Neteller money and $125 immediately appeared in my account. I haven’t decided what games to play there though I’ve poked around and watched a few different games. The interface is rather primitive, and the look and feel of the cards reminds me of a old poker slot machine rather than actual cards. But, they do offer a nice price spread, allowing a newbie to start small and work upwards, and they appear to have plenty of guaranteed money games. I may dip my toe into the waters tonight to check it out, and see whether the blogger-reader tourney might be in my future. There’s probably more money to be made on the betting line for the tourney. Bet against me.