Math Night

Well, it's not MATH night, because that is on Monday, by definition. But it was Math Night at my daughter's school. One of the games was to place six different colored tiddly winks in a paper bag, and keep making draws until you got at least one draw of each different color. There were apparently many who didn't understand, because 6 draws hit about 6 different people. Uh-huh. Maybe try putting the wink back in the bag and mixing them up between draws? The rest of them seemed fairly normal (heh), with one kid taking 19 tries and one taking 26. We got a 13 and an 11. If you squinted real hard, the distribution on the blackboard was starting look like a normal distribution. It was fun spending time with my daughter doing math games, and I will be looking for similar games we can play at home (a lot of them are on her homework sheets, but most of those are more quizzy than game-y.) We walked home by the light of the moon, and enjoyed the stars.

Tonight is also Mookie Night, and I will once again be trying to win a place in the tournament of champions of the BBT3. I cashed in both points and money in last night's Skills game, coming in 4th place. The game was Pot-limit Omaha, and I had a lot of good hands, combined with a dose of luck to make the final table. I think I must have had aces or kings at least 20 times, and doube-suited aces several of those times. I also pulled off a bluff that was either stupid or decent. I happened to be bluffing with the best hand, but I was doing it into a bigger stack, and he called me on the flop and turn. The river gave me a higher two pair on a board with a possible straight and a couple of flush draws that didn't get there. He folded, and I survived. On my final hand, I either called a small raise in a four-way pot or checked the big blind. In any case, I didn't have much of a hand, but I hit top two pair on a rainbow flop, and figured I'm good to go. I bet the 16K pot, and Astin raised all-in, having me covered. I instacalled and lost to his middle set. I'm not sure I have the discipline to get away from that hand in a short-handed situation. I should at least have taken my time to consider what he could have: bottom set, AKJ9 for a wrap draw (QT were on the board), AQxx, KQJx, TTxx (not likely), or QQxx (not likely). It turned out he had TTxx, which I didn't consider likely. So in addition to my "must have draws" PLO mantra, I will add, for all pot-limit and no-limit games, pause before calling off all of my chips.

:wq