Horrendous run

I would love to be able to tell you all that I'm now back on a fantastic winning streak, but i would be an enormous liar!!   The last 3 weeks have been the worst of my short, but generally impressive, poker career.   And its not even down to me playing badly, in a way it would be brilliant if it was because of my bad play because then I would have something to work on & improve!  But it has literally been a combination of coolers, horrendous luck & a significant amount of horrific card-dead brutality !!  I will give you a quick rundown of some of the hands:-

* There is a raise to £8 and 3 calls in front of me, i look down at pocket Jacks, so i 3bet to £40.  This is a pretty substantial raise & I expect to take down the pot there & then OR be 4bet back in which case i might pass my hand if it is from the original raiser, but i will just get my money in against the 3 "callers" as the best i believe any of them can have is AK here as they haven't 3bet themselves (which they would with QQ, KK or AA).   Anyway the flop comes 842 (2 diamonds).  I get the rest of my money in & a guy calls me with J9 of diamonds and obviously another diamond comes for him & i lose

* Guy raises to £8 and I 3bet with pocket 10's to £23, he flat calls.  Flop comes JJ3, pretty good flop for me. I fire a C-bet, he goes all-in for about double my C-bet & i call.  He just FINDS the AJ  and hits quads on the river for good measure!!!

* I call a raise with 55 in a 4way pot and see a flop of K95, nice. Except another guy had flopped a set of 9's!!  Flopped set-over-set is a surefire way to lose money!!!

* I have AQ and raise to £7, flop comes AA7 in a 3way pot.  There is a bet and a call, i raise and get put all-in, I call and he has pocket 7's.  Soooo sick!

* I raise with AJ, one caller.... Flop comes Jack high, I C-bet, he raises all-in & i have to call for the extra.... he has KK.

* I raise with AK to £8, get one caller.  Flop comes K26. Money goes in, he has AA.  ffsssss!


On top of all the above, when i have picked good spots to bluff & make moves I have been getting called reallllllly light.  Basically anything that could go wrong HAS gone wrong & it has been a truly painful few weeks

The 2 hands below pretty much sum up this run!!!!!

* I'm in the BigBlind with 3,5 and the pot is unraised, so i obviously check and see an A24 flop, i have the nuts (but there are 2 spades there too).  Somehow there is a bet & raise in front of me, i reraise & it ends up in a 4way all-in!!  A flush comes on the turn & i somehow manage to lose money after flopping the nuts. I actually won some money on a side pot so it wasn't as bad as it could have been but still, flopping the nuts you would expect to MAKE money on the hand!!!

* I have pocket Aces and after 3 limpers, i raise to £8..... one caller.  I have a little look to see how much more money he has, and i find out its £7 (thats SEVEN friggin pounds!!!).  I flop a set so i check & he checks, i turn QUADS, i check & he checks.  I bet the river & he folds!!!  ohhhhh for the love of god!!!    I make £8 with quad aces!


I wrote all the above on Monday but didn't post it, since then I have had 2 half decent winning nights so i am hoping i have come to the end of this horrific period & can start enjoying my poker & winning some money again!

** Unanswerable questions, 2) Why can't they make the whole plane out of the same substance that little indestructible black box is made from? **

Worst night yet

Worst night yet

Well, i acknowledge that most of my blogs focus on the positive side of poker so i thought i should balance it out with the other side of things, the type of night when you would happily never play poker ever again, when everything conspires to go against you, and most importantly when you lose a lot of money.  Friday was one of those nights.

           I had sat down with about £80 on a decent table, some good action but not full of maniacs. I had got myself up to about £220 by playing some good solid poker & picking up a couple of hands, then the following happened.....  I pick up pocket Jacks under the gun. I start to pick up some chips to raise but then i notice that this really active player next to me is already getting hold of chips to call me, so i pick up an extra few £1 chips & make it £11. Now this obviously seems like a big UTG raise, but in these £1/£1 games if one of the first people to act after you have raised, call the raise then you are likely to get several callers, and with Pocket Jacks i would really rather just get it heads up.  He still calls me regardless & so does 1 other person. Not ideal.  Anyway, the flop comes down K,10,4 (all hearts) and i have the Jack of hearts.  I have to continuation bet so i make it £28, the active player makes it £78.  Now, i know he has a lot of moves in his game & i know he thinks i am quite a tight-solid player so i could just be C-betting & giving up to any resistance from him.  I also know he could easily be doing this with just the Ace of hearts or an open-ended straight draw (OESD).  I give it some thought & decide that about 30% of the time he is making the raise based on the fact i will just give up on the hand & fold, about the same amount of time he is doing it just with the ace of hearts/OESD. And the final 40% he is doing it with a hand that genuinely has me beaten (King, or set of 10’s/4’s).   So, if only 40% of the time he has me beaten, & of that percentage my Jack of hearts would be good a decent amount of the time if another heart comes, then i think shoving all-in here is +EV.  I decide to just get it all-in & hope he folds or is on a draw. I get the rest of my money in & he calls pretty quickly. Siiiigh, i must be beat. The rest of the board bricks out (7 of clubs, 9of spades i think) and he turns over K10 for a flopped two pair with 10 of hearts.  I wasn’t disappointed with my evaluation of the hand as i was correct in the fact that if another heart had come then my Jack of hearts would have been good.  Against a lot of other opponents I might have just folded to a raise on the flop but due to the amount of hands he plays & how aggressively he plays then i am happy with how i played this hand.

            So, i reload for £120, and more than double it up with some good play & not too many great hands.  I’m sat with £280 then this horrible hand happens. No need for big description... i get pocket kings, another guy has pocket aces, all the money goes in & i lose.  Now this kind of hand happens in poker (its one of those “coolers” i talked about in a previous blog), but if you are going to be on the receiving end then you would just rather you only had like £100 or less in front of you at the time. Or at least your opponent only has about that. Unfortunately the other guy had about the same as me so i lost the full £280 in front of me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Ouch.

          Again, i reload but only for £100 in case any tilt descends on me. I play the next 3 hands so i look like i am on tilt to the table but i’m just playing the strength of my hands.  4^th hand i pick up KingJack & raise, get one caller.  Flop comes AKJ, ideal as i can keep betting & looking like i’m tilting but i have actually flopped a monster. I bet just under the pot (nearly £20) and he makes a comment about me “steaming” and calls. Turn brings the 2 of diamonds, which puts a flush draw out there. There is £55+ in the pot & i have about £60-70 left, so i just go all-in.... it looks bluffy & i want him to call.  He obliges & shows A10.  River is, yes you guessed it, 10, to give him bigger 2 pair.  Ohhhh for fucks fuckin sake!!!!

            I reload for my final £120, and within 5-10 minutes there is a raise to £6 infront of me & a call, i make it £26 with pocket Queens and then get raised all-in.  I’m never folding here so i make the call.  Flop comes KK4 and he whips over his AK for a flopped set, no queen comes to dig me out of the hole & that was that.

            In the space of what cannot of been any more than an hour & a half i had lost £420 of my own money.  But as i had been nearly £150 in profit before it all went wrong, that is a swing of almost £600 in 90 minutes!  That is HUGE in a £1/£1 game (600 big blinds!!!).  People might ask why i didn’t just go home when i was in profit, well it just doesn’t work like that. I was playing well & stood to make a lot of money on that table the way it was playing.  You just cannot account for such a horrific run of bad luck/lack of cards going your way when you are in a coin flip situation (my QQ vs AK means i’m a 56% favourite).

            I have had a few days off since then, partly due to my birthday celebrations, but mainly because i felt like i needed a break from poker. Nearly headed off to casino about 2 hours ago (Monday night) but decided to have just one more night off from it.

Unanswerable Questions (i am going to finish each of my blogs off with one of these totally unrelated-to-poker bizarre life quandries, i don’t know why!!)   **Why does my home answerphone say “Thanks for calling” AFTER the person has hung up??!!**