waaaat and goals

Here's my month in one hand. I've built a decent stack, played really well and now this:

Poker Stars $10+$1 No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t75/t150 Blinds - 4 players

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter



BB: t5047

CO: t1410

BTN: t3788

Hero (SB): t3255



Pre Flop: (t225) Hero is SB with A A

1 fold, BTN calls t150

This guy has been very fishy all tourney, playing about 30% of his hands, rarely raising.

He should not limp anything here, but obviously if these fools never did anything wrong, we'd have no hope of making money.

Not that we have much hope anyway, it seems.

Hero raises to t600

A standard raise. I expect him to call, but with AA, I don't really want a fold.

1 fold, BTN calls t450



I'll tell you right now that his hand is 55. He is not getting even close to the odds he needs to call here, and should fold. Not calling raises with pairs is one of the "skills" you need to acquire to win this sort of poker.

Flop: (t1350) 2 3 7 (2 players)

Hero bets t750, BTN calls t750

I suppose he might think I have AK here and his pair is good but he should still fold. Even if your pair is good here, it's likely you'll be overtaken. Looking back, you might consider that it would have been better to bet more, so that I didn't look like I was cbetting. But I don't want to fold out 55! He's worse than 20/1 to improve on the turn, and I am quite happy at this point because I can shove the turn and hopefully get paid. If he then calls, he will be 20/1 to hit the river.

Turn: (t2850) 5 (2 players)

But that's the story of my month.

This shit happens. Poker involves up and downs. This, I suppose, is why the mental game is so important. I tend to think I'm decent when I'm winning and terrible when I'm losing. My overall results are okay: a lot of people would be very content with them. But they don't inspire confidence.

So my overall goal for 2009 is going to have to be to chill out, to make the amount of work I do and games I play match the desire I have to succeed. And I will have to trust that I am able to achieve that success. I should be. I'm not an idiot, and the pond is full of people who are.

Part of that has to be to be happier about what I do well, so I'm going to post more about that. I mean, I did well in this hand. It's how it should be played. I'm confident of that. I could have bet more on the flop to make a flush draw pay but I didn't offer a good price to anything he could realistically hold. So meh. But bad beats are not really instructive, except in case you need reminding that poker is a cruel game.

So my goal is to write about the good things about poker. There are some!