A-game good, B-game bad

I managed a huge $67 win this week in a rather disjointed 12 hours of play!

Monday was a day off and then Tuesday and Wednesday were largely uneventful before the fireworks began on Thursday. This was fireworks in a good way to begin with as I won one large pot with AA against a very stubborn JJ, most of the money going in on a Q84 2-flush flop. What was he thinking? Was I re-raising pre-flop with rags?

Friday’s early play was a train wreck before some of the damage was repaired in a steady late session. There were two big losses and I think a better player would have avoided at least one of them, although I’m not certain which one.

First, playing 3-handed I raised on the button with K7 and was called by the big blind, who was maybe a little on the tight side. The flop came KK5 with two hearts and I bet a standard $40 when checked to. He raised me to $120 and I re-raised to $310, in theory, so that I could fold if he went all-in. After all, what could he have if not a better King than me or possibly pocket fives? Or maybe a flush draw? I pondered right down to the end of the time allowance whether to call his subsequent all-in and then a strange reflex action kicked in and I called, only to be shown 55.

Then, a bit later, when playing 10-handed I made a river bluff that I suspect would come off a high percentage of the time. I called a mid-position raise with T8 and with the big blind we saw the K75 (two hearts) flop 3-handed. After the raiser checked, which I wasn’t expecting, I decided to have a stab at the pot and fired $80 which the raiser called. The turn was an offsuit 8, and I didn’t want to bet myself out of the pot now that I had picked up a pair, so I checked behind. Also, I wasn’t worried about giving a free card to a flush-draw as this would have been a good flop for the raiser to bet at if he had flopped the flush-draw. By checking maybe it would look to the raiser as if I had a flush-draw. The river came the 9 of hearts and the raiser bet $140 into me. I raised all-in (he had about $640 behind), trying to represent the flush, thinking that I could make him lay down most hands here. In actual fact, he had a straight with the 86 and after great deliberation made the call.

The week-end was a break-even affair, and I only managed a measly 3 hours in total. I lost three biggish pots making second-best hands, but this was erased totally with a nice win when I flopped quad twos. I limp-called against a tight and very aggressive regular who I had tussled with before. The flop came 922 with two clubs and I decided to check to see how much he was going to bet. He made it $70, which I thought was on the high-side in an attempt to get as much in as possible early on, to chop the odds available for a flush-draw with overcard. At this point I decided to raise to $210, as I reckoned it would look no stronger than a flat-call to him and would have the added advantage of possibly getting all the money in on the flop. Like I said, we had tussled before. To my total joy but not total surprise he went all-in and I had the easiest call imaginable.

Overall the week was a disappointment as there were a couple of spells where I lost a bit of focus and started to try to make things happen where the opportunities were not really there. If I am honest with myself, I probably could have made $600-700 if I had played my A- game all week. Like I said, a better player would have probably folded the K7 v 55 hand and that would have saved another $200-300 in equity. On the positive side, I managed to win just short of $1000 in the smaller (non-showdown) pots. This shows that my general level of aggression is OK.

This week I need to maintain my focus at all times. Sometimes I feel as though I am due to hit a run of good situations, like I see others hit day after day. This is just a fallacy: we need to concentrate on maximising all opportunities that come our way. This often means picking up one extra small pot (say $60) every couple of hours. At the time it looks like no big deal but it’s massive in the context of a player’s results.