Christmas Poker

Had a really nice Christmas last night (we follow the German tradition in my household, meaning we have our big meal and open presents Christmas eve). It was a pleasant, low-key evening, with too much food and dessert, plus a few nice gifts. My wife gave me an Amazon Kindle book reader, and, after I got the unit charged up and registered, I promptly started searching Amazon for poker books on my wish list that I will download to the unit.

I also received a couple of other "real" poker books, including Jim McManus' new "Cowboys Full," which is a thick tome on the history of poker. I've only skimmed it so far, but the book looks pretty interesting. The other two books are a) a collection of poker stories and anecdotes by famous players; and b) a big book on poker math and advanced topics in hold'em. Skimming through the latter, I found a series of graphs that are called "PATL" plots, which plot a player's VPIP against his PFR (I'm not sure, but I think P=Passive, A=Aggressive, T=Tight, L=Loose). Now, I thought I was the first person to think up this chart, which may be true, but someone beat me to publishing it in book format. I will be interested to read that section of the book to see how the author employs the information.

In other news, I didn't play any cards yesterday, but I did get up early this morning and got in a quick 100 hands of $5NL in Operation Hindenburg. Everyone else was asleep (still are, in fact), and I was able to take my time and search out some early morning fishy tables. Long story short, I made a relatively easy $6 in profit, which puts me at $180 total for the experiment so far. I started out a little passively, but then slapped myself and started playing more aggressively. It's a funny thing, aggression. For me to take control of a table, I have to push my aggression up to a level where it feels like the opp is going to wise up and start coming back over the me. It's all about pushing the envelope of table dominance.... but not going too far. Hard to explain, but for me, playing strong, winning poker means I need to be just a tad outside my own comfort zone vis-a-vis aggression..... Well, at least that's how it seems to work at the $5 tables. It will be interesting to see how I have to adjust my game if/when I move up to the $10 tables, if/when I hit the magic $200 'roll. We'll see.

Anyway, merry Xmas, happy Chanukah, feliz Navidad, etc...
All-in for now...
-Bug