The first was similar to the situation the other night, only tonight I was drinking more, and my judgement was clouded. I got trapped between two people who had trips and I had an open-ended straight draw (KT with a JJQ flop). Every time I called, I had odds. But finally one guy decided to push and it was $13 for me to call. There was $30.30 in the pot. Assuming that the guy to act after me was going to push, it would be $18 to call with $48 in the pot. Now with all that raising and re-raising going on, it didn’t seem like anyone actually had the boat. I figured trip Jacks, Queens and Jacks, another draw, or a flopped straight. I should have called. To punish me for my bad choice, the poker gods bestowed a 9 on the turn.

The second was pretty damn stupid. Someone raised to $4 before the flop from UTG. As soon as I raised to $14 with JJ from MP1, I knew I had done something stupid. The difference between $4 and $14 to someone with a competitive hand was not going to be great. This was not a tournament. The button pushed, making it $20 to call. Then I did another stupid thing and called. My jacks got assraped. Yep. UTG had pocket eights, so I was right to challenge him, but my raise just dug a big hole for me that I couldn’t resist going into head first. Blargh.

Eventually I had to rebuy and made my way back to even with a flopped boat (AK with AAK flop) against JJ and A2. Still sucks to lose my previous winnings and potential winnings with bonehead play, though.

CR and ER took last week off, and JB vetoed the idea of playing short-handed, so we skipped a week. This week the regular group was back:

    This week  Cumulative  Average
	CR    +$6.05      +$6.05   +$0.47
	EM    -$1.40     -$11.85   -$0.79
	ER    -$2.95      +$6.35   +$0.49
	JB    -$5.00     -$11.15   -$0.80
	JC    -$1.55     +$15.55   +$1.11
	Me    +$4.85      +$5.80   +$0.39

My suggestion of doubling the buy-in this week was nixed; but as JB snidely pointed out, I had to do a double buy-in anyway less than two hours into the night. I was getting out-kicked, out-pocketed, and possibly out-played, especially by CR. It was brutal. My two best hands during this time were probably KK and AQs. I won with the first and chopped with the second, but that only prolonged my descent.

After the second buy-in, I started to do a little better. In the last 2-3 orbits, I hit a monster rush: 79s beat JJ with a runner-runner flush against a river straight, A8 beat 9T with a river boat against a turn straight, 89s won with a flopped straight against what I assume was a draw that never materialized. The 79s was a true suckout. I called a minimum raise in the BB pre-flop and flopped top pair. I called the bet and turned the straight and flush draws. I called the bet and riverred the flush. Felt bad about that one.

In those first two hours where I lost hand after hand to CR, other people were losing some decent pots to him as well. He took pot after pot and built up his stack to nearly 3 times his buy-in. Over the next hour and half he eventually lost a few bucks, but still made it out of here the big winner. He’s still third in cumulative winnings, but he’s definitely on a good trajectory.

EM put JC on the spot a couple times when a flush appeared on the board. It was clearly painful for him to fold, but fold he did. Overall, EM’s running bad. Her theory is that she needs to be pissed off to win. Possibly. Maybe if I had done that 79s runner-runner against her jacks early on it would have changed the game. Still, she’s not down to the depths that I hit after the first ten weeks of keeping records: -$13.

ER was pretty mad about my boat beating her straight. I don’t feel as bad about that one as I do the 79s. I had the best hand on the flop and when I raised her turn bet, she just called. A re-raise would have been grounds for thought. I may have called anyway, not believing that she’d made her straight. Another down week for ER, but her cumulative’s still good for second place.

Tonight was a lot like some of my NL forays. Down, down, down, then a rush to set things right, and I’m done. Which does wonders for my confidence in my abilities. That’s meant to be sarcastic. I’d rather be lucky than good, but I’d still like to be good.

In some ways, it’s a hyper-efficient way of playing poker. When you’re playing limit, you take whatever edge you’ve got and you push it as far as it’ll carry you. That’s often good for 10-20BB. In no limit/pot limit, you do the same, but this time it’s good for 10-50BB. Sure, there’s more variance, but I find that even when the cards run against me, I tend not to lose that much money. The times when I lose the most money is when I refuse to believe the other guy flopped a set. But I don’t mind those losses as much.

Destroy their pot odds. The suckouts tend to be more rare since I don’t let the calling stations off easy–this not only reduces chasing, but reduces the schooling phenomenon as well. Now here’s where your play may differ. Maybe you like having fish in multi-way pots because of the long-term +EV. For me, I’m okay with reducing my variance a bit at the expense of my win rate. All it takes is one guy calling to the showdown with middle pair for you to double up. Here’s the key difference between no limit and pot limit: your ability to destroy the odds. With pot limit, anyone with 9 or more outs on the flop has odds to call the pot. Check-raising the max can help you get around this limitation, especially with a few smooth-calls ahead of you. At a loose enough NL table, the implied odds could be through the roof. So you may not be able to manipulate the pot enough to win it. In these situations, you want the best hand, and a good draw: best set, top pair and nut flush and gutshot straight draw, etc.

Establish who you are. Bets and raises for 3-4 times the previous bet can really put the fear of God in your opponents. This does wonders for your table image. I haven’t yet fully exploited this, mostly because I’m concerned about my ability to change gears once I’ve taken a stab at taking the pot, which in turn is colored by my experience of having chasers fold at the river bet.

Manouevers vs. blunt force. I think slowplaying is overrated because if someone’s hand improves, it’s hard to let go of your good hand, and that can be expensive. Try check-raising instead of check-calling. Also, I think on some hands like a pair or three suited cards on the flop, people expect trickiness, so just betting with your set or flopped flush may get you more calls than checking the flop and betting the turn. That can give you the opportunity for check-calling the turn and other trickiness. Trickiness is overrated.

Anyway, I figured I should actually post something about poker, rather than just results or a hand, so there it is. All based on just a few thousand hands. I’ll get back to you when I’ve got another ten thousand. In the meantime, read the tips at Cards Speak.

And I can point to where that happened. The one hand where I had 15 outs and called all those bets, and the other hand where I paid some fish my buy-in to see that he had indeed sucked out on my cowboys on the turn.

So the review lesson of the day is that one badly played hand (AKA curiosity) can kill your results. I don’t regret calling the guys who had two pair on the flop. I only semi-regret confirming that dude was a major fish. But it was an expensive piece of information.

Still, I’m happy about fighting my way back from a $50 deficit to where I ended. And best of all, Pauly was on IM with me to see the Hiltons hold up against a small pocket pair that decided to push pre-flop. The winning hand? My quad nines, queen kicker. Heh.

Okay, so I said I was happy about fighting my way back, but I’m still bummed about paying out too much on that hand. After all, I never got an opportunity to assrape that guy who sucked out the guthshot straight on the turn (after a preflop raise and a $12 bet into a $10 pot). So what good is it to find out whether he flopped trips or just sucked out a better hand? He does, after all, go by many names on Party. And they’re all perfectly willing to give it up to my cowboys while holding top pair and hoping for their gutshot. So that settles it. No more investigative work. I’ll leave that to the detectives.

I found myself in a hand with KJs. Flop comes up QT3 with two of my suit on the board. Two of my opponents had QT and I got trapped between them as they bet, raised, and re-raised–I’m pretty sure I had odds every time I called–and eventually they were both all in. Pot was $53 and it was $17 for me to call. With the open-ended straight and the flush draw, I decided to call. Didn’t improve and the two pairs took it. That was painful. The question is, was it correct? I think so.