Poker: Winning, Losing, Winning, Losing AND Focus

Well, I haven't written in a while. It's because I just get more depressed when I lose and then write a blog about losing. Ugh. But since I feel the need to be honest with myself (and possibly whoever else might be reading), I'll go ahead and note my failures and successes so far.

Since my last writing, I went to Memphis for a funeral. Of course, being poker players, we stopped in Tunica for a couple days on the way back. I BLEW through $600 in 3 days. Now, I know many people BLOW through much more money in a much shorter time frame. And maybe I didn't do all THAT bad since I only lost $600 in 3 days, but I sure did FEEL like a big fat L O S E R.  So here's what happened. I started with some good old fashioned $1-$5 7 Card Stud. I used to LOVE that game. But I never remember it being such small stakes. I did "ok" in the Stud, but I kept getting antsy. I'm just not used to a game with $10 pots.

So I switched to $1-$3 No Limit Holdem for a little and couldn't do any good. Well, I was doing pretty good. I had a nut straight on the turn and managed to get my opponent all in. He had pocket QQ's and managed to spike a 3-outer on the river to suck all the life out of my stack with his K high straight.  The next day I played in a $70 tournament at 11a.  We got to the final table. With 6 of us left and 4 players getting paid, my mom moved all in. I looked down at AK.  Ugh.  Now what? Well, if another player had moved all-in here, I might fold. I'd already folded an AQ preflop to a super tight player. And Mom is pretty tight - much tighter than me. The thing is that my stack is "decent". It aint great. But no one has a "great" stack because of the tournament structure. First place pays only $450.  2nd = $250, 3rd =$200, 4th=$100.  If someone else behind me calls and knocks her out, I'll be upset that I laid down the AK.  I figure that if I go all in over the top of her no one else will call and at the very least, one of us will be a MONSTER chip leader in a tournament where everyone is short stacked. The truth is that I do want one of us to win. It's not really collusion, but I would lay down the AK here and pick a better spot to chip up rather than risking 95% of my stack if it's anyone else. I push. All else fold. She turns over AQ and is instantly crushed. Then a Q hits on the turn.  Two hands later, Mom knocks me and another player out in one hand to take the tournament down to 4 players. They chop and Mom takes $400 away from that tournament.

Later in the day, we play in another $75 Tournament. I become a monster stack early on when I flop a flush and get a guy with pocket AA's all in and drawing dead against me. But a dumb donkey gets drunk at my table and starts playing any two cards. It's weird. When she felt like playing a flop she did no matter what the cost.  Which wouldn't be so bad except that she was smack ass LUCKY too!  There were no opportunities to take down blinds and antes. My stack started to dwindle down. I made the final table, but again only 6 places were paid and my stack was super short. Mom made the money again and they all agreed to a chop of $300 a peice when they got 4 handed. The dummy was a monster chip leader and I figure too dumb to know that she could have gotten herself a better deal. And the rest of the players were smart enough to recognize that dumb and lucky were a hard combination to beat so they all readily agreed to the chop.

But that's two T's I walked away from with nothing. I played a little more stud and won about $20 or $40 bucks.  Then went into a wild and crazy $4-$8 game. I played my first hand blind and won a huge pot with 72. I guess I should have played all my hands blind because all of the rest of my hands I could see and all of them lost.. pocket pairs, AKs, AJ, AQ, ugh ugh ugh... again I went to bed a loser.

So, I didn't want to blog about that weekend. I've been playing on PokerStars since I got home. I play mostly small tournaments. Nothing bigger than $11 buyins.  I've been winning a little. Won a Pot Limit Badugi Tournament for about $30 and some change. Won a pot limit 5 card draw tournament to gain an entry into one of the SCOOP tournaments.  Cashed in a $11 deep stacks tournament.  And that's after losing most of my stack and getting below $300 in chips EARLY in the tournament. I had to go show a house in the middle of the tournament. I built my $300 stack up to $20,000+ then lost down to $9000 and called Mom to play for my while I showed. She go the stack back up to $22,000+. Then I got tired and accidentally clicked "raise" when I meant to "click" fold.  So anyway, I went out in the money and cashed about $21.

And as I write this I'm in a $2.20 NL $4k Guarantee and doing fairly well. Ever since I started playing under the assumption that all of my opponents are complete and total donkeys, I've been doing much better.  I now know to fold my hand when they make some stupid raise or stupid all-in on the river and hit their miracle card. I have set my level of expectations from my PokerStars opponents very low and it's made it much easier for me to fold a hand. I've learned that the big bet they make on the river isn't usually a bluff. It usually meant they were a HUGE dog the whole way and went card card to hit some stupid miracle hand.

Yes, I know I'm cynical, but it's working for me so I'm gonna hold on to my cynicism.  See ya'll later.

Oh, one more thing. I know that Annette Oberestad wants to be known as the best female player in the world. Frankly, that's my goal too. So, here I am putting it out into the universe. In a perfect world, I'll win a seat into the 2010 WSOP main event.  And in the end it'll be me and Annette playing for the bracelet.  And, of course, I'll wipe the table clean with her!  No offense, Annette! You're a great player. I just want to be better than you and some proof of it too!

What a night!

And I don't mean that in a good way. Geeze. I just kept having big hands and they just kept hammering. I wish I were card dead tonight. Card dead would have been cheaper. If I had queens or Kings, they had Aces or straights. When I had AT and the flop came AKT the other guy had pocket tens. Yeah sure I won a few hands, but I sent a ton of pocket pairs into the muck. I'm sure I'm due to flop a set after tonight.

The good news? Well, my reads were spot on for the most part. The only time I was left scratching my head was against the set of tens. And that's because he never bet them. He'd smooth call all bets or raises. It was a little weird, but I noticed he did that very same thing on other hands. So, if my reads stay good, and my focus is tight, I'll hammer them next time. If sometimes your the windsheild and sometimes your the bug, tonight I was definitley THE BUG!

Winning Streak

Well, I sure hope this lasts forever. I'm back. I'm focused. I know when I'm making good EV decisions and I know when I'm not. I don't need to see my opponents or their hands. I know where I stand. Maybe I'll try playing a tournament without looking at my cards! Nah, I'm not that good...yet!

So here's the latest results. Yes, this is all small ball, but I decided to start small and grow. I played 4/8 Fri at the Belle and lost $100. Went back on Mon and won $100. Saturday and today I played small tournies on Poker Stars. Played 11 tournaments and cashed in 7.

I got a small cash first for like $4 in a $2 T.

Then placed 3rd in a 18 player Fixed Limit T. $1.75 buyin, $5.40 cash

Next played a single table Badugi $1.20 T and took 1st for a whopping $4.

Placed 6th in a 87 player $2.20 mixed limit/nolimit tournament for $7.83.

Took 55th place out of 3395 players and cashed $14.59 in a $2.20 NL tournament.

Cashed 10th place in a 1000 player 4-handed NL tournament that cost $4.40 and paid me $70.40.

And I won a stupid 10FPP rebuy sattellite which got me a seat into a $3 rebuy tournament that I didn't want to play. 22 people won entries and I hoped I could unregister from the $3 T but it had already started so I just donked out... too many screens open so I chose to focus on the others.

My secret? Shhh, don't tell anyone. I figure that everyone in a $4, $2, $1 tournament is a donkey. With that in mind I keep the pot small and then hammer them when I got the goods! I'm also prepared to fold when I think that donkey might have just gone card, card to catch some stupid hand. I expect them to make stupid calls and I expect to profit from their stupid calls.

Maybe it's a safer outlook to  have on poker in general. Instead of thinking, "There's no way you made 2 (or more) bad calls to run me down so I must have the best hand and I call your all in," my new philosophy is, "Yeah, I know you're a donkey, and I had the best hand all the way, but not anymore and I'm not married to it." And sometimes my thinking is, "No, your Ace high is not good enough but thank you for pushing allin and my pocket threes will gladlyy take all your chips."

You know it really is amazing at just how big of a donkey these players are. I reraised with AK. An Ace hits the flop, and this guy dumped dumped his whole stack on my lap with KK. I love donkeys. And I love rich Texans... next stop, Coushatta! I don't know when, but my mouth waters when anyone even mumbles the word "Kinder". Yeah Baby.

A Little Refocus Goes a Long Way

So i took my own advice from my Focus blog and got right back out there. I went to play in the $4-$8 limit game at the Belle. I don't like the no limit game there, generally, because it's same bunch of tightwads all the time. Now if something special is going on or i see a juicy fish in the game then I'm all for it. But usually the $2-$5 no limit game at the Belle isn't worth playing for. It's hard to get money out of a table full of nits. So limit was my choice last night.

The game was a little soft, but there's usually one or 2 calling stations. It was a good mix of players. One guy was trying to act wild by juicing up the pots. There were a couple of weak-tight players and no more than 2 calling stations at any given moment. One thing that I like about this game is that it's easy. It's a good game to go to when my confidence is failing. I can practice my reads and it costs me no more than a few big bets to find out if I'm right or not.

I'm generally a calling station, myself, in the $4/$8 limit game if I have any pair. I find that often times the guy with a missed hand like AK will continue betting and my flopped middle pair will win. I'm able to see the flop with trashy hands, fold if I miss, and drag some big pots when I hit. And there's the bonus of pissing people off or giving them the impression that I'm a donkey when I hit these hands. Hey, they don't know that I do, in fact, know exactly what I'm doing!

So last night I bought in for $90. I widdled away dow to $30 and built my stack from there. I ended up leaving with $340 and a renewed confidence in my reads. Oh yeah, and it was fun too! Poker is always fun when I win!

My Run in Biloxi Last Week

I have to just followup on last night's post. Yes I did play the second half of my last session poorly. But I also had a few recent wins to talk about. Last week we went to Biloxi for the Spring Break Poker week. I played in 2 of the noon tournaments. The first day i felt badly all day and had trouble concentrating. I did surprisingly well for feeling so bad and being card dead for about 2 hours, but I did not cash.

The next day, feeling all better, I hit a $200 noon event. I made a mistake early on from which i did a good job of recovering. Then I hit my hand. I raised with TJ and got 2 callers. The flop came 89Q. The big bling checked. I led out with a bet. The button folded. And the big blind shoved all in. He had me covered by a mile. He had just knocked out another player by hitting a 2 outer to make a bigger full house than his opponent. Of course, I have the nuts here and am not going anywhere. This is my chance for a double up that has me sitting pretty. He shows 2 hearts. He just shoved with a heart draw! The Kc hit the turn. Whew dodged a bullet there. Then a heart came crashing down on the river to eliminate me from the tournament. Ugh. I felt just awful, but I know there's no other way to play it when you flop the nuts. I mean I gotta take the chance here for a double up and my opponent only has a 30% chance to catch against my made hand. Well, I still felt bad.

That night I played a little live action at the IP. There was a donkey at the table. He was stuck for $900. He left for a little and then came back with $300 more and lost it on the first hand. Stuck for $1200 he rebought, but I was tired and needed some sleep. I went to bed a mere $100 ahead in that $1-$2 no(imit game.

The next day I woke up, packed my things, loaded the car and head over to the IP poker room. Ahhh, one seat was open just to the left of the same donkey who had been there when I left the night before. Wearing the same clothes, I figured his style and his luck couldn't have improved. I sat with him to my right and bought in for $300. I picked up AQ. He raised. I reraised to isolate. And the fun began. I started taking down pot after pot, sometimes making my raises to $150 preflop with just AQ. But it worked. The other whiney men at the table could nothing but watch as a "girl" was getiing all the donkey's money. Oh they were making all kinds of wise cracks about me, but I knew exactly what i was doing. I mean, hey, the donkey was so bad, that half the time he would simply fold on the river and I would take down the pot by default! In 45 minutes I made $900. Then we went to have breakfast.

After breakfast, we played in a small $70 tourney at the IP. I played really well, although one of the whiney babies from the cash game was at my table complaining about how bad I played. Ha! Let me tell you just how bad! Everyone folds to me in the cutoff. I raise with 78. Mr. Whiney Baby calls from the small blind with 9T. The Big blind calls with 4h5h. The flop was something like 9hThblank. Small blind makes a weak bet. The big blind calls. And I call with favorable pot odds and even better implied odds. The turn lands  6d. I have the nuts here and the Small blind make a biggish bet. The big blind calls. Right here I shove. You see these two guys both got to start the tournament with 3000 more chips than me and I want to make up that disadvantage. Mr. Whiney Baby calls with 2 pair. The big blind folds his flush draw and I more than double up, leaving Mr. Whiney Baby with just his 3000 extra chips and a lot of crying about how far I was behind when I had the nuts! LOL. I went on to finish in the top 4 of that tournament. We chopped when we got to the last four. 3 of us took $408. The chip leader took $448. I was very pleased because I received almost the equivalent of second place money.

All in all I finished the trip ahead despite my bad run in the 2 tournaments that I played at the Beau.

Focus

Something's missing. I've been losing too much lately. Sure i have a few wins, but my losses are begining to outweigh my wins and that's not good. Well, at least i can say that I've noticed. I'm playing too many hands and playing them poorly. My reads are off. Or are my reads on, but I'm still making bad decisions?

I'd like to say that i should take a break. That's always helped me to return to my game more focused. But I don't think a break is what I need. What I need is to, simply, refocus and  get back into the game. It's just not that complicated. Poker can be tricky because human nature tends to get in the way of smart rational decisions. We tend to see fewer losses and justify bad play. But I'm not going to allow myself to do that.

I went to Harrah's the other day and I played well for the first half of my session. Then I spiraled into crappy, crappy play. I'm not sure when, exactly, I lost my focus or my good decision-making skills but it I do know it all went to hell.

This blog is to assure myself that I will not continue to play like a loser. I will get back my winning edge, and I will smoke my opponents. I am the winner I expect myself to be. I have my focus. I am a predator at the poker table. I am a force to be reckoned with. Look out, world. I'm ready!