Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Wait, Chips Are Moving My Way, What Gives?

'Tis nice to, you know, win money, instead of hemorrhage money. Not that I can thinking of any situation where hemorrhaging anything is good, except maybe hemorrhaging diamonds from ones rectum, and even that is sort of dodgy.

Although I nearly aborted the ultimately successful mission after exactly two hands last night. I'm dealt KK on the button, MP lemur (who is truly, truly terrible but plays regularly in the 10/20 games) open raises with 74o, folds to me, I three-bet, folds back to lemur, who caps.

Flop is 7h 5h 10c. Lemur bets, raise, 3-bets, cap.

Turn is Qd. Bet, raise, 3-bet, cap.

River is 7c. Lemur bets, I clutch my junk and call. Lemur wins.

Well played, sir, well played.

Those are the sort of hands and players that have been hammering me the last week or so. And yes, I fully realize that I want that to happen, and should welcome beats like the above, because in the long run I'll make much coin sitting with that very lemur. But it's hard to translate that abstract knowledge into tangible enthusiasm when losing hand after hand after hand like that.

But yeah, get thee hence bad beat stories. I persevered and managed to grind out a decent win at the 10/20 short tables.

I also booked a nice session at 15/30 at Party, returning to the full ring tables. I have to say it felt pretty nice, sitting back down with PokerAce HUD and PokerTracker fired up, with actual, you know, data at my disposal. You can definitely make good arguments on both side of the crutch/tool debate, as far as using programs like PokerAce and PokerTracker, but it's hard to argue with results. I immediately won a big hand early with JJ against an uber fish that I never would have pushed that hard if I didn't have 5,000 or so hands on him in my database.

It was also a nice change of pace from a psychological point of view, as far as not playing shorthanded, and taking a break from the always attacking, highly aggressive, push-any-potential-small-edge mentality that works best in shorthanded play. Obviously it's not a bad idea to play that way even at full ring tables, but you're not sacrificing as much potential edge, methinks, by adopting a slightly more conservative approach.

I also donked around in a couple of Full Tilt tourneys, to no real avail. I have this bad habit of playing well early, building a decent stack, then tangling with short stacks in the mid-late stages with speculative hands from early position like KQs, KJs, etc. I'll put a decent sized raise out there, mainly hoping to take down the blinds, but not hating it if a short-stack shoves (and easily willing to fold to a raise from a larger stack that can do me serious damage), at which point I'll be committed and can call. Which is exactly what happens and I'm racing with KJs for 1/5th of my stack. Which isn't the worst play in the world, but it's just not a spot I have to be in from early position, with a more than adequate stack to bide my time.

1 comment:

CC said...

My top fatal tourney leak is middle stage, average stack size, getting involved in speculative hands with a raiser and a caller or two involved. I've never been successful when I've done it, and most of the time it is a path toward losing a pot/getting short-stacked/going out with A7o or hitting the flop/playing aggressively/getting smacked. I probably need to have a better plan something like: I'm throwing KQo away if there is a raiser in front of me here in the middle stages, then doing the out-of-position-quick-muck as soon as I sniff the cards. Then feeling good.

Good to see that the upswing has started. One data point does not a trend make--unless you get KK cracked in first orbit and still claw back into positive territoryf!