Spent about six hours on Wednesday playing on Paradise with some sad results: -35BB. Brutal. And it wasn’t my starting hands, either. I was getting some pretty good cards:
AA, 3x, 100% win, +2/hand
KK, 3x, 33% win, -1.38/hand
QQ, 2x, 0% win, -4.25/hand
JJ, 4x, 25% win, -1.19/hand
TT, 1x, 0% win, -10.75/hand
AQs, 1x, 100% win, +3.13/hand
AJs, 2x, 0% win, -.75/hand
KQs, 2x, 50% win, -.25/hand
AK, 8x, 25% win, -2.27/hand
QJs, 2x, 0% win, -.75/hand
ATs, 2x, 100% win, +5.13/hand
AQ, 3x, 33% win, -.75/hand
Roughly organized according to the Sklansky hands listed in A New Guide to the Starting Hands in Texas Hold’em Poker.
There are some other hands like AJ that I haven’t included, but overall, I was getting great cards more than 10% of the time, which would seem to indicate that I was getting my share, or more than my share of good cards.
And of course, in my 26,000 hands or so, I see AA winning 80% of the time, KK winning 75%, etc., etc. These are group one and group two hands for a good reason. But tell that to the guy who called the raise with 57 on the button and flopped the open-ended straight draw. Tell it to him again when he calls 2 bets cold with J4s in the CO and then calls 2 more bets cold with a gutshot staright draw. Yep, he got them both on the river.
Oh yeah, about that -10.75/hand. What? You missed it? Go ahead, scroll back up. Okay, so here’s how it went down:
Preflop: Hero is UTG with Th, Td.
Hero raises, 1 fold, SB calls, BB calls.
Flop: (6 SB) Ts, 9d, 5s (3 players)
SB bets, BB raises, Hero 3-bets, SB caps, BB calls, Hero calls.
Turn: (9 BB) Jd (3 players)
SB checks, BB bets, Hero raises, SB folds, BB 3-bets, Hero caps, BB calls.
River: (17 BB) 9s (2 players)
BB bets, Hero raises, BB 3-bets, Hero caps, BB calls.
Final Pot: 24.75 BB
Main Pot: 24.75 BB, between BB and Hero.
Oh, the tension. I’ve never been in a game where we’ve capped every street post-flop.
BB has Js Jh (full house, jacks full of nines).
Hero has Th Td (full house, tens full of nines).
Outcome: BB wins 24.75 BB.
Ouch, ouch, ouch. No bad beats or anything screwy like that. BB put me on the straight or flush draw, I put BB on the straight draw or possibly the made straight (of course, by this point, we’d capped the turn), and he had me. He had me good. I cried like a little girl, my tears streaking down my grubby face and soaking the tip of my cigarette.
Nah, that didn’t really happen. The crying bit, I mean. There was some cursing and shouting, but only at the poker gods.
So down another 35BB. I’m getting good at this.