Wait, the ATM is TAKING Money from Me!

I suppose I was overdue for a beatdown in the Titan NL games, which was thoroughly delivered yesterday. The odd thing wasn't so much the beatdown, but that I was catching all sorts of huge hands (flopped quads twice, and rivered quads another time, in addition to a healthy number of pocket pairs transmorgifying into flopped sets) yet couldn't, for the life of me, get paid off. And then the very next hand after making a whopping total of $4.00 in genuine American dollars with my quad 7s I'd flop top two pair with AQ and some lemur couldn't lay down his measly pair of 5s to a pot-sized bet, which suddenly became a set of 5s on the turn, yada yada yada. Rinse and repeat that scenario more than a few times, run KK into AA a few times, add in a little shot to the kidneys from the tilt monster, and bam, you've got yourself a hefty little losing session.

Top two pair is killing me of late in big pots. I suppose that's the next donkey lesson I need to learn in NL, after absorbing (mostly) the ability to not go broke with TPTK, which is to be able to get away from top two pair in certain spots. It's sort of hard, though, in relatively short stack NL games at 1/2 and 2/4 to find many spots where it's correct more often than not to lay down your top two pair. Usually by the time a few bets, raises, and/or re-raises go into the middle on the turn you're pretty dang close to committed, and those games are populated with such donkeys in general that "great" laydowns more than likely just cost you money in the long run.

If you didn't get the i4Poker casino bonus in I mentioned on Saturday, no soup for you, as they apparently yanked that puppy off their site within a few days of releasing it. Ever now and then I get a wee twinge of guilt from taking advantage of offers like that, as I can only imagine the operators of the site suddenly seeing a huge influx of people signing up, whoring the bonus in the casino, and then immediately requesting a cashout, and suddenly what seemed like a good idea ("Hey, let's give away free money to get people to sign up at our wonderful site!") quickly turns into a nightmare on the balance sheet. Then I remember that, umm, we're talking about an industry that lagrely profits froms and markets to the weak, dumb, and addicted, and I don't feel quite so bad.

If you did miss the i4Poker casino bonus and are looking to get a few more B2B bucks in your pocket, BestPoker also has a casino bonus currently running. It's a little annoying to find on their site, as they use the abomination known as Flash, but click on this page (http://www.bestpoker.com/Poker.aspx?LanguageId=en) and then click on the casino image on the right, second up from the bottom. That'll pop up a big graphic, mentioning a 50% deposit bonus on 100. Click on that image and you'll get the actual terms. It works exactly like the i4Poker one did, as far as depositing into your main account in the cashier, transfering to the casino, at which point you get the bonus automatically added to your accont. WR is 25x bonus which is pretty decent.

Still staying pretty busy with house stuff, as we're moving the big stuff on Saturday, and I'm scrambling around, trying to get painting done at both places before then. Stellar timing on our part, as far as moving in Texas in the August heat, but what are you going to do. Other than, you know, not buy a house and move in the August heat in Texas.