Frustration

I suppose this is as good of a way to begin this blog as anything, especially as it encapsulates a lot of what is going wrong with my game right now. Tonight we had our semi-regular home game which serves as the main entertainment for the evening, usually with a UFC show in the background (as was the case tonight, and it's a good thing...my main man Georges St.Pierre retaining his title was the only good thing to happen today).

Over the last week or so, I've been taking the hand histories from Sportsbook and slowly slogging my way through entering them into an Excel sheet I created (Poker Tracker doesn't work with SB, and I don't have the spare 55 bucks right now anyway). During this process, a few patterns immediately jumped out at me. First, I've done very well at the highest limit I've been playing at (.10/.20, +$40), horrendous at the one below it (.05/.10, -$41), and not so great at the smallest limit either (.02/.04, -$7.50 or so). I attribute this to some extent to the fact that continuation bets and the like actually WORK sometimes at .10/.20, whereas the other two limits are always no-fold 'em hold 'em. Two other things - my play from the blinds isn't all that great, and I lose a TON of money on marginal high hands (which I will define as anything from A-J suited on down to 10-10). When I win with them, it's always a small pot...I make a small raise and opposing hands go into the muck at the speed of fucking light. When I lose with them though, I hemorrhage money like my chip stack got ventilated by an Uzi. Nothing really changed with any of this tonight (keep in mind that the home game is .5/.10 as well).

Anyone reading this who doesn't know me would probably think I was no better than any other online micro-stakes donkey playing in the various card rooms on teh intarwebz. But, I went down to Atlantic City and profited over $200 in a couple of long sessions at the $1/$3 tables at Bally's. In these home games, I usually do very well for myself. Maybe it sounds like I'm trying to convince myself (shit, maybe I am), but I'm not a bad player...I really, really am not. It just feels like it lately, though. One thing I do need improvement on though is my focus - when I play online, I always have to fight the urge to check my e-mail or fuck around on Facebook...when I play the home games or even at AC, I'm not watching the other players and the hands I'm not in enough. While I'm not usually prone to go on tilt, when I do, it's 0-to-Berserker Rage in about 2 seconds. Tonight, I was on tilt even before the game started due to some bullshit that went down at my soccer game last night. If this weren't a game with friends, I would never have played at all...so I suppose it isn't surprising that I wasn't paying a lot of attention, wasn't playing smart and definitely wasn't basing calls or folds based on reading the other player's hand. Still, in a just world I would only have ended up a buck or two down instead of 7.

I've started taking down hands in a notebook now, so I can actually give specifics. I opened up the game by stealing a few blinds and getting out of the way when it wasn't worth trying. I'm usually aggressive in that manner, and I like to set my table image early. On the 7th or 8th hand though, I got myself a nice holding of A-10, and raised it up. One caller and one terrible flop later, I had to fold...said caller informed me he held Q-Q. Trust me, it wouldn't be the last time I had a nice hand end up second best in the course of the evening.

One orbit later, I picked up .90 with Q-10, only to lose all of that in the next hand with 4-3 (I believe I had an open-ender that whiffed). A few hands after that, my K-K ran up against A-A for a -1.90 loss, and on the VERY NEXT FUCKING HAND, my A-J with the ace paired ran up against A-K for a -2.75 loss. I can't fucking REMEMBER the last time where I actually had someone dominated and they actually paid me off for it. Two orbits later, it happened again. My K-Q suited profited a whole 10 cents, then I picked up A-J again and lost 1.15 with them (all told, I had them 7 times in 181 hands, and lost 5 of them for a -7.35 total). I mean, it's not like I'm playing super-tight and everyone knows when I have a hand - out of the 181 hands, I had some part in 114 of them! I mean, a decent amount of those involved folding my blinds to a pre-flop raise, but it's not like I was the Rock of Gibraltar! Furthermore, I have the reputation in this game as kind of a loose and wild maniac, so I just don't get why my good hands aren't getting paid off.

I did recover at that point and won a few pots. I got .35 with A-J, 70 with K-K and .35 with K-10. Still, that hardly made up for the losses before, and I soon lost another .60 with A-J again. A few orbits later, another .40 was gone with Q-6 suited when my flush draw swung and missed like, well, anyone on my favorite baseball team. F-r-u-s-t-r-a-t-i-o-n.

So it went for another two hours or so, until I finally won one good pot (1.25) with A-10 where I may have raised someone off of the best hand. I think I had the 10 paired, and someone had their Jack paired or something. A solid win with A-Q was mostly neutralized by a 30-cent loss with Q-10. I won a total of 90 cents with K-8, 2-2 and 6-5, only to lose 1.50 with K-2 suited where my opponent kept making the bets enticing enough where I had to call with my four-flush draw. It whiffed, of fucking course. I've been playing for three years now, and I think the last flush I hit that paid me anything significant may have occurred at the Outer Banks in 2005 when I first played this fucking game. Ugh.

As it got towards the end of the session (well, when I bailed anyway), I had lost ANOTHER 90 cents with A-J, but then I went on a bit of a hot streak. I picked up 1.50 in total with A-6 suited, 9-8 and 10-10, a dollar with J-8, .35 for stealing with 7-2 (everyone pays a nickel if 7-2 wins in our game) and another .30 with 7-5. I folded the SB for just the 5 cents, and at that point I was only 4.25 down...not so bad considering the horrendous luck I had been having to that point.

Then, THAT hand happened. Like I said, I usually keep a lid on my anger pretty well, but Tilty McTilterson showed up after this one.

I had...no, really, GUESS WHICH FUCKING HAND. The flop came something like J-8-x, and my opponent was first to act. He put in a .30 raise or so, which I of course called as my Jack was paired with top kicker. The turn was I believe a Queen, which I didn't think my opponent had. Still, he raised a pretty significant amount, I think 1.50 or somewhere close. If memory serves, the river was a 10. With a board of Q-J-10-8-x, I should have realized the danger at some point, although in my defense, this opponent had raised me off the best hand a few times and had shown total bluffs afterward. In retrospect, I should have trusted my instincts and went all in on the turn. Still, I figured that he didn't have A-K, and I didn't think he had a set either. Honestly, I couldn't really put him on anything, but I felt like I had the best hand the whole way. He bet less on the river than he did the turn, .75 or thereabouts. I had to call with those pot odds, and I felt I had the best hand anyway. He turns over 9-9, and a nanosecond later my sunglasses where hurled across the room. I immediately got up and left the room to clear my head, because holy SHIT, was I steaming. I mean, I was ready to explode. I wish I knew what he thought I had the whole way, you know?

However, that's no excuse for the cavalier way I played the hand. There was enough danger on that board where he could have had a lot that beat me - J-J, Q-J, 10-10, 8-8, Q-10, a set of whatever the blank was, A-K, K-K, even A-A. At some point, I should have given some consideration to the fact that if he was betting at it, he had to have SOMETHING. While betting at it with 9-9 was fucking insane and he only won with the runner-runner turn and river, I don't know what I was beating other than a total bluff or some holding like J-7 or something (which he was capable of having based on how he was playing). On the flop, I should have re-raised all-in right there, or at least something significant. I could have done it on the turn too...if he had called at that point, I probably would have had a lot more right to be as mad as I was.

It's not a mistake that I probably would have made in Atlantic City, but it irks me all the same because I KNOW better. I'm a better player than this, and I probably shouldn't play when I'm in this mental state next time, even if friends are over.

Ugh. What a fucking weekend. In the next post, I'll show some hands from those histories on SB I was referring to before, and I'll try and deconstruct some more of my mistakes for you. Until then...