Saturday, March 22, 2008

Poker Today

Well, I played $8-$16 Wednesday night and lost $300 over approximately five hours. The good news is I felt pretty comfortable. The bad news is I made a mistake or two and just generally had a bad session.

When I initially got there (a little after 6 pm) the table was pretty tight and we went about an hour and a half without a kill pot. Slowly, the after work crew got up and went home, and the table got significantly better. But, for the first 2-3 hours, every decent sized pot I got outdrawn in, quickly dropping $200-$250. After that, even though we had some fishy players sit down (one in particular, actually, who kept me there until after 11 pm) I had a hard time making any significant progress.

As far as my goals from last post, I did horribly. I had one call down to the river which cost me two big bets (with second pair, but two overcards came, and he kept firing). I figured him for top pair on the flop so the call-down wasn't that good, although he had a history of bluffing, but not a history of bluff-raising the flop and going three-barreled. In hindsight, I should have bluff-raised the turn when an overcard came and I might have gotten him to lay it down.

I also never pulled the trigger on a bluff-raise. At one point I almost did, but I stopped myself at the last minute because the guy wasn't that good of a player and I wasn't sure if I could get him to lay down his hand.

Overall, I felt like I was being a little too passive, which was probably partially due to the raise in stakes, and partially due to my lack of decent cards.

I did count the pot pretty well though!

*****

Today, I'm definitely going to try to play $6-$12. Why? Because in the past two Saturdays, I've taken $1200 out of the 12 game. I'd be silly not to play if Saturday's game is so soft.

Goals for today (keep them simple):

  1. Take my time before each action. I've got up to three choices (fold, call, raise). Consider each possibility every time I act and open my mind to new plays.
  2. Bluff-raise the turn or river at least once.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a good start despite the loss. I would've stayed there too w/bad players. But sometimes, the cards just don't come out right for you. It happens... your upswing is coming.