What a crazy day

Friday was one of the craziest days I have ever had at poker. It was a day that showed the peaks and valleys possible in the game, in only a few thousand hands. As I said in my last post I was going to really start getting a lot of hands in each day. At about 2pm I sat down to play a 4 or 5 hour session. It started off incredibly well, and I was up 4 or 5 buy ins right away. The good times didn’t last very long as I started spiraling into a ridiculously bad run. I had about 8 hands where I had someone crushed with 2 or 3 outs on the turn only to hit one to beat me on the river. That will happen and it doesn’t bother me at all. It’s very easy to take a session like that and chalk it all up to bad luck. What I want to look at after the session is spots where I could have saved money but didn’t. In this session there was definitely some room for improvement. I ended the session down $138, but could have made some folds that would have saved me at least a buy in.

The next session was more like a train hitting me directly in the face. I sat down, and on the very first hand I got a player all in on the turn with JJ on a 2A27 board when I had AK. He hit a J and I wasn’t too happy about that. On the next hand I had just a gut shot, but was pretty sure the player didn’t have much of a hand on the flop so I pushed the turn. While I was right about the flop, the turn had made him set. The very next hand (all on the same table) I had AK again and the flop came A93. I led the flop and was raised. I thought it was the perfect time to faint tilt and pushed all in. He let his timer run all the way down and called with his set of 3s. I started to feel a little tilt tingling down my spine but continued playing. I made a few bad river calls that I normally wouldn’t make. I finally gave up when I had AK TPTK(I’m almost never folding this in the $50NL game) beat by a set of 3s (again) on 2 tables at the exact same time. That session I ended up down $191, not a good day so far.

I had planned to take the rest of the day off, but after relaxing for a while I decided to give it another shot later that night. My main goal was to not do anything fancy. I would play a little tighter than usual, not trying to make any big calls or bluffs. The strategy seemed to work very well as I crushed the games for +$271. It felt great to make such a good comeback, only losing $58 on the day. With $54 in bonus money earned it was pretty much like breaking even. I was happy to get 3401 hands in, and expect to do more of the same next week. I’ll probably either take the weekend off or only play some small sessions as I really want to watch all the football playoff games.

Poker is always taking you for a ride but Friday was more of a rodeo. There were definitely some mistakes made along the way, but for the most part I stayed strong and was able to ride out the storm. 2007 has been off to a rough start, but I’m certain there is big money in the future after I ride out this streak.

Bankroll: $2515
Hands played this week: 6677
Bonus Cleared: $168