Well it has been a while since I wrote a post. And unlike the usual reason of “not playing poker” it is because I have been doing nothing but playing poker. Unfortunately it has not been all good poker. I think I played for 11 days out of 12. The first 7 days I was playing very poorly and was not sure exactly what my problem was. It really took a lot of self analyzing to realize where my leaks were. As a result I had to stop playing any suited connectors ever. Well for right now at least. The reason for this was that I was putting to many extra bets in on the flop. It is a form of tilt, trying extra hard to win every hand, and I am sure everyone does it sometimes. I would get stuck sometimes calling down or raising with second pair when everyone checks to the button and they bet. Now sometimes it was good, but with the number of other draws. over-cards that were possible for him to beat me, the fact that he could have top pair all made the move less profitable for me. At least until I can get my reads back off tilt. So I have been forced to play ultra passive for a little while. It has helped my game a lot. I do take a few more bad beats but I also catch more people with hands that I have dominated. AJ suited is a perfect example. If I raise the hand the only hands that call me will most likely beat me. But if I limp people with AT or KJ will call. You do want to be very careful that people don’t pick up on how you are playing or someone may move to your left and just raise you every time you play.
Like I said I have been playing all week long and have never gone on a “rush” . I would win one big hand, very big sometimes and every once in a while I would win two hands in a row. But I would almost always lose a large hand like two hands later. The last two days I played (one 8 and one 10) hour session I think I played the most patient poker in a while. Especially yesterday. I was able to control my small blind calls. (another very common leak) and even if I had not had a hand in a while I did not call KQ suited or AJ suited to any raise. What did happen to me that I cant ever remember happening to me is that for almost 5 hours I didn’t raise a pot pre-flop. I didn’t get AK AQ AJ (late) AA, KK, QQ, JJ KQ (suited late) in the entire time. I did get TT a few times but every time I did there was either already a raise and a call, which I then wanted to see the flop first, or there were a crazy number of limpers before me. One of those times I won a huge pot. I couldn’t believe that every time I looked down I had something big with a 4. And never pocked 4’s. I finally did get AQ suited and 3 bet someone who had been raising crap. I played it perfectly for a A, K, J flop but he sucked out his A6 on the river with the 3 outer. But I remained composed and in an impressively good attitude. I had played about 8 hours had no good cards and managed to stay even all day.
Well I want to get ready for another day of poker. I really think my game is coming back together so I want to play as much as possible. Ill try to get a few more posts in this week, I do have a story or two to talk about.