Lady luck hates you

You know the goddess of luck just plain hates you when this happens. I wake up with 22 in the BB and call a minraise from the button. We are threehanded in a small sng. I am hoping for a raggy flop so that I can steal it from him when I check and he bets. The flop comes 552, so I'm miles ahead and loving it. He bets, I call. No point scaring him off because whatever he has, he's not likely to catch up now. The turn is another rag. He pushes. I call, of course, and he shows 66. Now those of you who know a little poker will be expecting a routine bad beat here. He rivered a 6, right? Of course not. I wouldn't be writing this post if the outcome had been that banal. He rivered a 5! Which counterfeited my boat and gave him a huge suckout. Still, it's providing light relief from my ongoing nightmare with QQ in the five-dollars. I have won an allin with it precisely once in the last 60 games, and that was against a tiny stack. Apart from that, I've busted against K3 (called my PF push, rivered a K), AKs (rivered his flush), AJ (hit his ace), KJ (rivered trips), AK (on a raggy flop, he bet I pushed, he rivered his A), AJ (he pushed on a twosuited flop, he runner-runnered a onecard flush), AJ again (flopped his ace, then rivered the J for good measure). I'm thinking I need to openfold those biatches.


As part of an effort to learn why I am shit at poker, I've been studying heads up matchups. I'm none the wiser. This is where I'm at: I can beat .25/.50 limit for 3BB/100. I can beat .50/1 as well, I think. I haven't played many hands but it didn't seem any harder to me. I am beating $5 sngs but I don't have a big sample. I'm not convinced my play is correct though because I seem to need a bunch of luck to win. I also beat the dollar sngs, which is a lot harder, because the rake is huge at PokerRoom and only two places pay. I am hopeless at tournaments. Not hopeless hopeless; but I lose money at them. I can't put my finger on where I'm going wrong. Maybe too tight? Not good enough postflop? The latter could well be it. In an sng, I'm a reasonably good judge of when to get my chips in when I'm short but I don't play well threehanded if the blinds are not very high. Okay, so half the battle is working out where you're deficient. All that remains is to fix it. Easy! (Actually, I go okay heads up. I've grown the requisite balls and I mostly win, rarely coming second unless the other guy gets hit by the luck shovel.) I'd definitely be better if I knew how to work this, and if I start taking sngs more seriously, I'll learn.