Earning

An alright session last night. It only reaped $36 over about three hours, but my cards were cold and so I really felt like I earned my money. Some well-timed bluffs, a value pre-flop call versus two all-in short stacks, and a hand I was really pleased with:
I had raised pre-flop with Aces, suited in clubs. One of the callers was a player who had proved himself quite tricky but not usually ‘out of line’.

The flop came fairly ragged, with two hearts and one club. He check-called me. The turn was the king of clubs, and now he bet but bet small. This had me thinking. I now had the nut flush draw, and considered raising with that and my (unimproved) Aces. But something about his betting patterns told me that he had just made a set of kings. His small bet, which was probably made to tempt me to raise, was giving me something like 4/1 to hit my flush and so I just called.

Bing! River was a club. He checked, giving me the usual problem of how much to bet with the nuts. Against most of my opponents I would bet pretty small to encourage a crying call. But I felt this guy had a good hand (top set), and the flush was backdoor and thus a little more suspicious (or so people seem to think). Most importantly, his own betting patterns and play suggested to me that he would bet big if he were bluffing in this spot, and would therefore be suspicious of a big bet. I bet just over two thirds the pot very quickly, and he called instantly –with a set of kings.

Sweet. I was happy with this pot because I played it with some thought at appropriate moments and was sensitive to my opponent in my actions.

Boiled frog

Well, I sure put in the hours over the weekend, only to make absolutely nothing out of it. This was mostly because I played on Friday night while swilling down several cans of lager – one or two cans too many.

I have played drunk – and played pretty well – many, many times, but Friday was different. Usually my inebriated play occurs when I get home from a night out; I’m conscious that I am drunk before I sit down and am prepared to fight the drunken impulses. But on Friday I started out sober and got gradually more and more pissed, which is far more dangerous. Like the old cliché about a frog dropped into boiling water, versus a frog in cold water which is gradually boiled, I didn’t realise what was happening to my game until it was too late. I was boiled alive and my chips turned to steam.

Actually, I made $114 on a 6-max table where aggression and a readiness to gamble are quite important. But on the full table I played simultaneously, I dropped $182 thanks largely to three dumb plays that were made by the lager that was playing my chips for me.

First, and the most defensible play, I reraised suited red Aces pre-flop in early position, only to get four callers (at least two too many). The flop came QJx with two of one of my diamonds. First chap (who is tight) bet big immediately. With very little thought I went all-in for only a little more, the result being all four of us all-in on the flop. $199 pot. The turn came a diamond. Woo-hoo. The river paired the board. D’oh.

The hand history showed I was 27% to win the pot on the flop, versus three opponents, so it was pretty much a break-even play and came within a whisker of winning me a very nice pot. I expect I would have made the all-in play sober, but at least I would have thought about it!

The other two plays were rubbish. I flopped a big wrap, but by the turn was clearly up against a set and flush draw and should have had the discipline to have folded with one card to come instead of tonking thirty dollars or more into the pot as a worse than five to one dog. And finally, I couldn’t muster the ability to fold my set of tens when the betting screamed that I was up against a set of Aces.

Oh well, a valuable lesson learned about the right and wrong way to play drunk!

Saturday and Sunday repaired almost all the damage; I played very, very well on Saturday, totally ‘in the zone’, and endured a dry, dry session on Sunday but limited the damage quite well to break even.

In fact, if I had played only 6-max tables over the whole weekend I would have recorded a decent win overall. The full ring games are SO boring and – for me at least – so much harder to win without getting some real premium cards and flops. I suspect that my 6-max rate has probably overtaken full games now. I’ll have to do some tedious checking through my stapled sheets of A4 file paper to find out for certain. Another reason not to keep records; its an almighty pain in the arse sometimes.

What else?

Been going through those attacks of sadness again, about once every ten days or so. I met the Girl I Am No Longer Seeing on Saturday night in town, and we ended up snogging. That may not have been a good idea. I admit, I am missing physical intimacy more than I expected.

I finished the Bob Ciaffone book yesterday, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Now I’m straight into ‘King of a Small World’, which has started in promising fashion. It looks like being a compelling novel, besides which I have read entire poker strategy books (hello Phil Hellmuth) which contained less useful insight into the game than some of the protagonist’s thought processes during a game in the opening pages.