GC Today: Disappointed

Ok, time to debrief my trip to GC this afternoon. As you can see by the time stamp, I'm home early and I'm pretty disappointed with myself and feeling a bit guilty. I'm sure your expecting to hear about another loss, some bad beats, some leaks, and some mistakes...

The thing is, I won $159 today.

I'm disappointed because I hit and ran.

I had my reasons at the time. When I got to GC at 11 am, the room was really empty, the morning tournament was winding down, and there was only one 6/12 table going. I scouted around a little, and got on the lists for 3/6 and 6/12. Five minutes later, I was called to a new 6/12 table, and it was a pretty darn good table: one definite calling station, a few more guys that called down way too much, some tighties, and generally a passive table. In an hour I got up $150.

Then, my cards went dead and all the bad players busted or left. The people who replaced them were tight and clearly pretty experienced. We went two rounds with only a few decent pots and a lot of chopped blinds. So I left.

And I feel guilty.

Because this is a leak of mine -- I hit and run too much. Granted, this clearly wasn't a good game, and I knew going in that weekend mid-day is not a great time, especially before the holiday. Our table had 6 players left after I left (there were two other 6/12s running) but it filled up quickly and one or two of the new players were obviously not that great.

If I had been stuck, I still would have been playing.

A lot of it was that I was kinda tired, and I was too lazy and scared to get more aggressive to combat the tighter table. I doubt I would have been worse than break-even against the lineup, but I would have needed to do more bluff raises and it would have increased my variance. The last thing I wanted to do is destroy my first decent winning session. But I still feel like I left work early on a Tuesday afternoon...

Oh well. I guess I'm ok with it. For now, I'm happy to just log a decent win after three losses. I felt super-comfortable when I was playing. To address my concerns:

• Be more deliberate before acting. I didn't have too many close decisions, but I definitely thought through my options. B
• Count outs, consider the strength of my hand vs the field, and be aggressive. Consider small pots vs large pots, and whether I'm trying to eliminate players or build the pot. Fold marginal hands in small pots. Definitely did this. On one hand, I had 57 of spades in the SB and the flop came 678 with one spade. I led out, a loosish passive guy to my left raises, one cold caller, and I called. Check-fold the river. I'm pretty proud of that, that might be a spot I'd call down with a pair and OE straight draw, but not all my outs were live and my back door flush was not live on the turn. He turned out to have a set, but I could have easily been drawing dead. A
• Be aggressive, but not stupid aggressive, like continuation betting an unimproved AQo into four players on a 754 board with two spades. Actually, I never had an issue with this. The few times I missed the flop I had someone bet into me, so it was a non-issue. But I was thinking about it at the time.
  
• Don't be afraid to semi-bluff raise and check-raise on the flop and turn against a tighter player. GC players will back down. I got in one check-raise with a big hand (top pair, flush draw) but overall I didn't get a chance. C+
  

For now, I'm going to enjoy the small win. I'll play after Christmas and for that I'll avoid hitting and running (it will be easier because my friend will likely be there). In the meantime, I'm going to keep studying SSHE and play some micro-stakes online to work through some of the ideas.