All Things Poker

In stark contrast to how well I ran on my first session (despite myself), this session was placed before me to remind me that I am not God’s gift to poker, and that I had a lot of work to do before even considering myself on the right path to poker aficionado / non-donkey.  If there was a bad decision to be made, I made sure to make it. If there was a voice inside my head, screaming at me to stop playing like a fish (and there regularly was that voice), I managed to ignore it. For every chance to play better I made sure to take twice as many opportunities to suck. This night was a combination of bad decision after bad decision with some less than optimal variance thrown in for fun.

First, when I was given a seat at the only open table I knew I was at the wrong place. I should have put in for a table move right away. It was a table with six people at it while the other three tables were full with ten each (the poker room staff is still working on how to manage a poker room). I don’t tend to do that well at shorter stack tables. I am still working on my “ABC Poker” and shorter tables force me to play outside my comfort zone until I have been there for some time and have meshed with the overall table dynamics. As it was I was being asked to sit down “cold” with a new table. Additionally even though I had never played with anyone here, I could tell right away that three of the players were aggressive and loose, and that one in particular had command here as he was quite comfortable and had a stack of $700 in front of him. Everything about this table screamed table change and that little voice was saying “go talk to the floor and put your name down for another table”, but what does that voice know, so I ignored it and sat down to play.

My next mistake came when the first hand I decided to play was KsQh on the Big Blind. One of the loose aggressives raises to $10. Mr. “big stack” calls as do I. The board comes KcJh6c, and I bet $20 into the raiser. He min-raises me so now there is $90 in the pot and it is $20 for me to call. I figure he is on a draw or a middle pair with good kicker and I can’t get myself to play back at him despite the fact that is precisely why I bet into him. I end up folding (sigh) and then mentally kick myself for the next half hour (another mistake). He later admits to having had the nut-flush draw to his buddy the big stack. Now it may or may not be true, but that was my read and even if it wasn’t, I bet into him with a plan in mind, and I didn’t follow through.

The next mistake came about this way: About an hour into the evening a new young buck player sits down. You know the type, “young, dumb, full of cum”. Its all about aggression and position with him. He doesn’t care who he is playing against, just so long as he can think of himself as the aggressive guy everyone is afraid to tangle with. Only this guy is super loose and it is obvious he doesn’t have it most of the time. My plan: wait for a hand, call to him, let him raise, re-raise him. As an added bonus he is sitting just to my left and he likes to hold his cards perpendicular to the table with one hand so that I can see at least one of his cards almost every time. So here comes the hand, I get AcKc in the cut-off with him on the button. I limp only because I know he is going to raise. Well of course he does, and he makes it $10 to go. The big blind calls (deep stack guy) and I re-raise and make it $40 to go (coincidentally I have $100 behind me, it will become important). He pisses and moans and finally folds (tada!) and then a horrible thing happens, the big blind calls! Now I quickly determine that there is $90 in the pot while the dealer is taking their sweet time getting to the flop, and I figure at this point I am married to the hand. I am playing against a loose aggressive and my hand is likely to be better than his *and* considering how much is in the pot, I feel pot committed, so I take the remainder of my chips and put them out there blind (yes, before the flop). Now stop and consider position for a minute. Didn’t I say Mr big stack was the big blind? Doesn’t that mean he goes first and that I just bet out of turn? Yup, it sure does! I was so busy being afraid of the big stack and why he called a $40 re-raise, I totally forgot whose turn it was! So the flop comes 5s4s2s and he says “well, I have to look at my cards one last time to figure out if I am gonna call you”. He takes a peak and says “well, you aren’t going to like this, I call, oh, and I have the nut flush”. He then flips over AsKs.

Now after the litany of screw-ups I have made, you would think I would accept my defeat and leave the poker room. Well that would be a smart thing to do. That would be a good quitting decision, and I have already mentioned I couldn’t make a good decision to save my life, so I bought back in and continued to play another 6 hours until 1:30 in the morning. I finally gave up on my attempt to turn the evening around and cashed out with my second buy-in intact. A total loss of $200 for the evening.

Stats:
P/L: ($200)
Hourly Rate: ($25)

Tags:   Fish · Lost MoneyNo Comments