The Streak Continues

I played a short session this afternoon, only about 200 hands but the results were very good. I ended up +$273 and it was a pretty routine session with nothing too special. I had the time and energy to play more hands, but I am once again quitting because I'm up a buy-in or so. I have been playing really well lately and actually running quite well also, but I'm still almost in shell shock from my downswing in Vegas (online wise). I maybe had two or three winning sessions online in Vegas the whole six weeks, and I was playing about three to four times a week. That is a horrible win/loss ratio and it really sort of killed the confidence and had somewhat of a snowball effect. Every time I stepped up a level, I would run so poorly and drop a couple buy-ins each session, and at 2/4 and 3/6, that is a decent amount of money. Like I've said before though, I know those limits aren't above my comfort zone money wise or even close to it, but rather it's more the fear of losing. I hate losing, especially in things that I put a lot of effort into. It feels so much better to be upswinging (obviously) and I really think it is making me play better. I just need to learn to sit down, forget about losing, and put in a good 500 to 1k hand session without constantly pulling up Poker Tracker to see how I'm doing. But enough of this rant. Here are some hands from the session:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1296707
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1296718
Both of the above hands involve pocket Aces for me, but the comfort level in each hand is very different. In the first hand, probably the worst possible flop comes down for my hand. It hits a typical opponent's range in this spot so hard that I am very rarely a big favorite. If we assume a typical weaker player's range is something like 77+,A8s+,K9s+,QTs+,JTs,ATo+,KJo+,QJo, you can really tell how many hands hit that flop. Doing a quick pokerstove equity calculation of this hand, I am only a 55% favorite to win against that range. So when I got check raised all in, I wasn't too happy, but I had to call getting over 2.5:1 and luckily he missed his 13 outer. This is one example of where I am running better as it felt like I was constantly losing in the summer when I was about a 60% favorite. The second Aces hand is very easy to play when you flop the second nuts and a guy goes berserk with his 5 high flush draw on a paired board.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1296806
This to me is one of the worst spots in 6 handed cash games. A hand like AQ in the BB is too strong to fold to a mid/late position raise. Just flat calling and then check/folding a missed flop is also a weak play, but I have certainly done it my fair share of times. This time I decided to 3 bet as I have been trying to play just a little bit looser in my cash games. When he calls, I can assign him a range of like 66+ and AQ+. So against that range, my hand is definitely behind, but I very rarely 3 bet out of position and then check on the flop, as it feels just like throwing money away and is super weak. When he calls my continuation bet, I have two options: I can shut down or I can fire a second barrel in an attempt to represent an overpair. I hand zero history on the guy and was pretty confident that his range was something like 88-JJ, but I wasn't sure of how disciplined he was on a board like that. Plus, once again, I was already up a decent amount and didn't want to throw it all away on a bluff. After seeing him check through to the river, I would make the multi-street bluff about 60-70% of the time in the future.

I'm probably not going to play anymore tonight because I hate losing back money I've already won (trust me, I've done it many times) and it puts me on some major monkey tilt. I'm going to Cleveland tomorrow to visit my wonderful girlfriend for the day so I won't be playing tomorrow. Taking days off from poker to do things like hang out with people important to you are instrumental to keeping something like poker in perspective. Plus, I typically come back fresh and ready to play my A game after a short break so look for another post on Thursday...