Poker Journal Session: The Comeback to Book a Small Win

Well, it wasn’t pretty, but I managed to come back after getting my butt kicked on a super tough $5.10 table to book a huge win of $8 in a short session of 1 hour (2 tables simultaneously, so 2 hours total). Here are the highlights:

The Good

• Caught some cards at this table in my short stay of 14 hands
• Table 3 | 13 minutes | +93
• $34 came from pocket kings, which I 3 bet a good player’s raise pre-flop, and no overcards came.
• $33 came from ATo… after a Ten came on the flop, the hand held up as a guy with K7 tried to bluff me off the hand.
• $29 came as AK suited held up on the river with high card ace in a heads up match with QJ

The OK

• 6.5 BB in my hour, I guess that’s pretty good… just solid poker here
• Table 2 | 55 minutes | +60
• $39 as ATo held up after an ace flopped
• $20 from a lucky river queen which gave me trip queens after an AK hit the flop. The loser had KJ, and let me see the river for free.
• $25 after flopping 2 pair with AJ and everyone folds on the turn
• $47 after flopping 2 pair with Q9s heads up… loser had QJ
• The important thing was that I had no big losses– biggest loss was $20 after my A9 was beaten heads up… no help from the board

The Bad

• Tough, tough table and a few mistakes made for a whoopin
• Table 1 | 36 minutes | -145
• (-$25) after trying to steal with JTs and trying to hit the gutshot after the flop
• (-$35) after flopping 2 pair with Q9 in a preflop steal raise, and the winner flopped the straight with KJ
• (-$20) after Q8 in the BB goes down to Q9s UTG when 2 queens flop. I was actually lucky here as my check-raise on the turn failed. An ace on the board too.
• My only real win ($23)at this table was on the first hand, when I flopped a Queen high flush in the BB, although everyone folded on the turn.

Looking at the above, I guess the 2nd two losing hands I played correctly, just got extremely bad luck… The first hand was just horrible. I should have ran away from this table after a few orbits after a few late position preflop raises stole the blinds…

Summary: A decent session, nothing to be ashamed of. My game is still tightening up, and I am still developing my ability to “feel” an opponent’s hand based on bets and raises. I think my biggest weakness is extracting the maximum number of bets in shorthanded play with a good, but not great hand. This is a product of the wild games at Hollywood Park– if you slowplay there, you are dead, and it’s carrying over to my online play. However, “letting people catch up” is extremely dangerous, and requires an excellent read on your opponent(s) in order to make it profitably, so I’ll keep playing straightforwardly for a while.

I’ll take the $8 and 100 more hands toward the Empire $100 bonus…

[thanks to peggydavis66 and hdouble via cc]