playing a game for a living = +EV

So far today I’m about break even. Shipped kk vs AA 150bb deep and lost, lost a coinflip, played pretty well though so I haven’t really been tilting at all. I did make one mistake that cost me a bit. Heres the hand

Full Tilt Poker $100.00 No Limit Hold’em – 6 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

CO: $100.50
Hero (BTN): $145.35
SB: $257.80
BB: $78.40
UTG: $100.00
MP: $52.35

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BTN with J T
UTG raises to $3.50, 2 folds, Hero raises to $10, 1 fold, BB calls $9, 1 fold

Flop: ($24.00) 4 T 7 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

Turn: ($24.00) T (2 players)
BB bets $12.00, Hero raises to $24, BB calls $12

River: ($72.00) 3 (2 players)
BB bets $44.40, Hero calls $44.40

Final Pot: $160.80
Hero mucks J T
BB shows 5 6
BB wins $157.80
(Rake: $3.00)

I’m going to start blogging mistakes I make, so I remember them better, and make sure I don’t do them again, as well as to allow myself to fully analyze the situation. I 3bet the UTG raiser, because hes playing 28/23, and folding to 86% of 3bets. So this is obviously a +EV situation, and completely standard. The player who ends up calling me from the BB is an unknown, and since hes not sitting with a full stack hes probably a phish. My HUD is showing no stats on him, but thats b/c HEM sucks sometimes for rush poker, and I probably have stats on him somewhere. But anyways we’ll treat the villain as an unknown who is most likely a phish. So his calling range is fairly wide. I think I like betting the flop, I checked at the time because…I’m not really sure why, but I like a bet here so he check raises his draws and we get the money in, folds out overs, defines his hand if he check/calls, etc. So I didn’t play the flop well. Then the turn came, which I played even worse. When he bets into us we have the best hand the vast majority of the time. He can have draws, pocket pairs, all sorts of shenanigans. But my min raise accomplishes absolutely nothing, except for letting him draw for free. So I should be shoving here to get his pocket pairs to call me before a scare card hits, and to fold out his draws and air and all that stuff. Well as you can see he does get to draw cheaply, binks off his str8 and I pay him off. So how should I have played this hand??? Bet/called the flop, and if he just called shoved the turn. I’d probably bet around half pot on the flop. I played this hand too quickly, this whole thing wouldn’t have been a problem if I would have thought more about his range during the hand. But while mistakes suck, they are great if you learn from them. And, I did learn from this one, and hopefully it won’t happen again. Time to eat a sandwich, and grind for a lil bit longer.