The Barber's Chair

This summer is really flying by so far. My wife reminded me that next weekend is the 4th of July and I haven’t even put the air conditioners in yet. At least we’re saving money on the electric bill. My online challenge is moving ahead rather nicely. If you recall, I was moving in the wrong direction due to the fact that I took a few shots playing NLHE on a very small BR compared to what was required. I decided to stick to LHE until I have built up enough of an online BR to make the final and complete transition to NLHE from LHE. Perhaps I should think twice about that as I had my first losing session at live NLHE last night. I ended up down $300 which is 1 ½ buy-ins at $1-$2. In hindsight, I think I played rather poorly. There were so many things that I should’ve adjusted to better, but I decided not to. It wasn’t for not realizing, but I felt as though I needed to be in a sub-optimal situation and deal with it. Now this isn’t how I intend on playing in the future if I have anything to do with it, but I think I needed to feel uncomfortable and thicken my skin a bit. My previous 5 sessions were a bit too easy and things were just going my way.

One adjustment was seat selection. I had 2 intelligent LAGs on my right side (not directly) a bad LAG on my immediate left and some tighter players on the left side of the table. I would have liked to been to the immediate left of the bad LAG because he was straddling every orbit when I was in the BB and raising a very wide range of hands in limped pots because he wanted to gamble and get lucky. Time after time, I limped or call the straddle from the BB, the bad LAG to my left would raise with some hand like Q9s or A8o. I should have tighten up a bit with marginal hands and looked for a better spot. He was a bit of a showdown monkey, so I didn’t like the idea of 3! with a speculative hand.

Another aspect to my session that I felt I managed poorly was how I played preflop. The table was a bit LAGgy with a lot of limpers, cold callers and small raises. I became a bit frustrated with how things were going and started alter my preflop approach. I open raised some weaker Ax hands, cold called a few 3! preflop that I should have folded, and calling larger than normal raises after limping. I plan on rereading the NLHE: Theory & practice sections on preflop strategy again as well as going over the postflop sections too.

The other aspect to my game that I need to focus is playing scared when I have a big starting hand. On one occasion, I raised to $20 after 3 limpers when holding pocket Aces on the button. That was too much even though the table had been rather loose up to that point. Another example is when I raised $12 holding pocket Queens with one limper. I flopped top set on a flush draw board and made a pot sized bet which took down a smallish pot. Lastly, I raised pocket 10s from the button in a straddled pot and got one called. Once again I flopped top set on a flush draw board and made pot sized bet. I have a virtual strangle hold on the hand and should have bet less. My opponent in this last hand hemmed and hawed a bit before folding. Earlier he had cold called pocket Queens in the BB to my $20 preflop raise ( I had AKo with 4 limpers), so I was really hoping he had JJ-QQ and would either call or reraise me all-in. He didn’t. I feel as though playing with this fear/anxiety polarizes my holdings and basically gives away the strength of my hand. This helps my opponents to play perfectly against me which may be some of the reasons why I attempted to mix up my play which had some less than positive results.

One last thing that threw me for a loop was the overall bad LAGGy play which put me in spots that were quite uncomfortable and left me wondering if I had made the right decisions. 2 hands stick out in my mind, both of which were near the end of my session. Some new players had come to the table as we got short handed. I was in EP with AJo and I limp. WRONG!!! Normally I would either raise this or fold it with the latter being what I do the most. AJ is a very tenuous hand to play from EP. I thought that I had read in NLHE T&P that you should limp AJ from EP. I misremembered. Anyways, I limp and there are 5 of us to the flop.

The flop comes A 6 8 cc flush draw. The Small blind who is new to the table bets $40 into a $10 pot. I sit in complete confusion as to why he would do this. Does he have an Ace and a flush draw? Does he have 2 pair or a set? What hand would call that bet unless it has him beat? This was not a good spot so I folded. It serves me right as I shouldn’t have been in the pot to begin with. The small blind flips over A3o for Top pair bad kicker. Pretty soon he busts after raising mediocre holdings postflop 6 hands later and leaves. Thanks for giving my chips to someone else.

The other hand was, of course, the last hand of my session. I limp 67 suited diamonds in EP (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/170/live-low-stakes-nl/flopped-flush-facing-big-raise-turn-1058693/#post27318043). My opponent in this hand, flopped top pair and a flush draw, turned 2 pair and a flush draw and decided to reraise all in on the turn. I called and he hit his 4th diamond that wasn’t a 5 to give him the winning hand and send me broke. I am still feeling the sting from this today as I hate losing hands like that even though the true reply is, “standard”. Like the title says, it was only a matter of time. Any comments on this blog entry or the hands involved are completely welcome, even if it’s critical. Talk to you soon.