Bad luck? or Bad Play?

After my L.A. trip I decided to take a couple of days off of poker, examine my game, and just settle down from the loss of the weekend. By Wednesday I was ready to go back to the tables.

I got into a 1/3 game at The Village Club in Chula Vista for a buy-in of $200. Usually I do ok, in this game if I don’t get “sucked out on”. (Which can occur often if a maniac or two is in the game.) Of course I love and hate maniacs. If I am getting cards, focused and playing a patient game, I can make good money off them. If I get frustrated and play too loose or start chasing hands I can bust out, before the maniacs do, because they just keep re-buying. I won’t do more then 1 or 2 re-buys before I figure I better go home and play another time.

Well, I wish I could say it was a good night. I stayed even for 3-4 hours with a couple of maniacs and then made two calls I regret and ended up going all in with AA and got out drawn by two little pair. The blind played his 3,5 suited and called my last $40 all in bet pre-flop. I left without re-buying. Didn’t feel confident, and didn’t want to lose anymore.

I went home a little discouraged thinking I need to “tear my game apart, and put it back together again.” But, I read an article on-line when I got home, that encouraged me to really examine whether it is bad luck or bad play. If it is the former, then don’t change your game.

I thought a lot about the weekend and tonight and decided it was about 80% bad luck, so I wouldn’t change my game, but I would remind myself to raise or fold, raise or fold….

Don’t just call, unless I have the “nuts”.

I also found this little piece on-line and am copying here to remind myself and any who read this to “raise or fold”……

If you’re going to have a default mechanism built into your poker programming, instead of tending to call, let it be this:

Raise more than you call, and fold more than you raise.

There are times when calling is the best course of action, and they’re fairly obvious:
Call when you have a drawing hand and need to make your hand as inexpensively as possible.


--Call when you want to deceive your opponent into thinking he has a better hand, so that he will come out betting on a more costly wagering round and you can check raise him.

--Call when you want to take an inexpensive card that might improve your hand.

--Call from the big blind when no one has raised and you don’t have a hand to raise with either.

--Call when an opponent to your right comes out betting, you have a huge hand, but by calling instead of raising, you believe you’ll be able to attract a few additional calls from players who act after you do.

Most other times, you are better off raising or folding.

In fact, most poker players call too often in situations when they should fold. It’s the single biggest mistake you’ll see at the poker table.

So after reading a few poker blogs I logged on to Party Poker and took on a $22 Single Table Tournament. An hour later I placed first and collected my $100 for first place in my account.

There is nothing like winning a tournament, even a one-table one to boost my confidence again, and encourage me that I am a good player.

I took on another one and placed 2nd for $60.

Hey, this is great.!!!

My third one, I busted out in 9th place.

Oh, well, a reminder that luck still has a large factor in winning tournaments. My KK got out flopped when a third Queen came. A nice compliment to my opponent’s QQ in his hand.

Spent the rest of the evening watching High Stakes Poker and still trying to figure out how Daniel Negreanu didn’t get upset when he got sucked out by Gus Hansen’s river 5. Gus’s river 5 gave him quads to beat Daniel’s 6’s full. Daniel lost $600,000 on that one hand alone.

I am hoping to have a season where the sum of my winnings for a three year period reaches that amount. (Maybe, I am aiming too low…. Grin)

My mother and sister are coming in from Chicago for this “labor day” weekend. It is my mom’s 82 birthday, so I will be the “tour host” to show them San Diego. May not get a lot of poker in this weekend.