Luck management

Monday night. Pool, beer and poker.

My libido was stirred by a bargirl/waitress in the pool club, who had a lip piercing and eyes that seemed to meet mine rather frequently. I’ve never kissed a girl with a lip or tongue piercing, although there was one with a ring in a more intimate place.

I had a nice session when I got home, a little shy of two hours. Omaha went my way; one of those sits where the flops were good and the turn cards came to order. The kind of session that makes minimising the losses and bad calls on other nights seem all the more worthwhile. I never managed a really huge pot, but several medium ones for a profit of $77.

I also moved up one tiny notch in the heads-up no limit Hold ‘Em freezeouts. Yes, a massive $10 game, which I won in under ten minutes. Frankly, I did get some cards, but my opponent was very poor and once again handed me his small but not desperate stack in the final hand with tiny bottom pair. He made one good play early on, raising me off second pair when the river put a fourth heart on board, then showing his bluff. But the fact that he showed his cards underlined my impression that he was playing not so much to win as to make clever moves. I guess he thought his river reraise on the last hand was another ‘clever move’, but I could not have folded almost any hand in the situation – never mind the top two pair I actually had.

So, there are numpties at the $10 level as well as the $5. This chap didn’t give himself much chance, seeing as he regularly folded his button. I can barely think of a hand I would fold on the button in a heads-up no-limit game, and doing it more than half the time is lunacy.

Moving on, I read a nice comment in Chicago Phil’s blog, albeit a comment he was reporting from elsewhere, describing poker as a game of ‘luck management’.

I think that is spot on. Luck management. Of course the cards run for and against us from hand to hand, from session to session. But we have to manage the risk as best we can, manage the luck so that bad luck wounds but doesn’t kill us and good luck brings maximum reward. React well to bad luck. Put ourselves in situations where we need less luck (good game selection, decent starting hands). It’s a perpetually fascinating challenge.

Finally, I note that sixteen people have read my profile, so now I wish I’d tried to make myself sound less of a dork. Anyway, comments on my posts are more than welcome.