How the mighty have fallen
In summary: I wasn't sure I should be playing or not tonight when I set out for the poker room, since I wasn't sure I was 100% all there, but I threw caution to the wind and went anyway. As my session got rolling, all my fears were put to rest as I was totally in the zone, caught good cards, made good moves, and basically came in and rolled over the whole table. During the first hour, I was totally blazing. About three and a half hours in, I hit my first big beat, thought it wasn't a bad beat, it was just a big confrontation that I lost. After that, I went on a disgusting run of playing too loose, bluffing too much, and generally spewing a lot of chips around. I ended the session booking a moderate loss, and generally bummed about how I handled the later part of the session. Oh, well, though...hopefully I'm just better prepared for next time.

There really isn't much to go over in the specific hand notes; most of the night my hands pretty much played themselves, with a couple exceptions here and there. As usual, this is all 1/2 NLHE.

I was only like half and orbit into my night when I picked up pocket aces in fairly early position. This was made slightly uncomfortable by my not having yet seen anybody raise pre-flop at the table, so I didn't know what the standard raise was. I settled on $10. A guy a couple seats down re-raised me to $25. It folded back around to me and I three-bet it...maybe $40 more? He called, the flop was rags, and I led out and took it down. Later on, a similar story with KK: I raised pre-flop, got two callers on whom I had position, and I took it down with a flop c-bet on an ace-high flop. Another miscellaneous win or two, and I was off to a great start.

My favorite was right toward the end of that first hour. I already had both the stack and the image to play more aggressively, so I made it $15 to go with pocket nines. I got four callers, with the big blind taking a bit of extra time to think about it. I got the impression that he wanted to re-raise, but lost his nerve. (A word about this guy: he was a pretty solid player, I knew that, but not overly tricky. He knew as well as I did, though, that most of the other people in the hand couldn't have been too strong, so I didn't give him a really strong hand, but he still had decent starters.) Anyway, the flop comes queen-high, and the BB leads out for $25. The pot is like $75, and I feel I have him solidly pegged: I give him a big queen, AQ or KQ. I marked his flop bet as a probe; he hit the flop and wanted to see where he stood. Beyond that, though, I was sure he gave my bets respect. I felt that I could take the pot down right then with a raise, especially because his flop bet was such a small portion of the pot (1/3, pretty uncharacteristic of him, I felt, though I hadn't seen that much of his play). Anyway, I make it $75 to go. The other pre-flop callers all drop out, and he thinks a bit, and then mucks AQ face up! I felt really good about myself: dead-on with the read. He said, "Nice hand." I thanked him, pulled in the pot, and mucked my cards. Then he said, "But a hell of a raise if it was a bluff." I laughed in a dismissive way that I hoped said to him, "Yeah, like I'd really bluff in that spot." Regardless if he bought that or not, I was pretty sure I couldn't pull that move on him again. But I was at least glad I did it once. :)

Much later on, I flopped a set of sevens that got handsomely paid off when I stacked a guy who had simultaneously flopped top two. No-brainer there, but it was nice to pull in the money.

Then came the hand where the wheels fell off. The hand itself is actually pretty uninteresting. I was in the BB. Action had folded around to the button, who tended to raise pre-flop with pretty much anything. Astoundingly, he raised. :) SB folded, and I squeezed pocket queens. He had made it I think $15, so I went to $45. He thought about it for a bit, and then called. This didn't really say anything; this guy was super loose pre-flop, but pretty conservative post-flop. I got the impression by watching him play that his pre-flop looseness was just part of his strategy, not an indication of bad play. In any case, the flop came jack-high with two-spades. Neither of my queens is a spade. To make a long story short, he had jack-rag suited in spades and had flopped top pair/flush draw, all the money went in on the flop, and he turned the flush for the win.

Like I said, not an interesting hand. It's not even a very interesting beat; on that flop, it's so close to a 50/50 shot that it's not even funny, so we both easily had the odds to put our money in, what with the pre-flop overlay. (We were both in for $45 pre-flop, and he had like $150 behind post-flop. I had him covered by a mile.) So there was nothing particular in that hand that should have changed my attitude or my play.

But, for whatever reason, I couldn't shake it off. My play got markedly worse after that hand, and I'm sad to say that the majority of my losses that followed were, I think, just horrible bluffs. This was not the table to be running bluffs, really. That one I talked about above with the pocket nines was definitely a special case: I had a good read on the guy, and I was sure he would respect my raise. He was without a doubt one of the better players at the table. (Basically, the kind of guy I can bluff.) I then started trying to bluff other people, people with much less ability to get off hands. Also I'm sure the frequency increase of my aggressive moves made people want to call me more. The final nail in my coffin was when I was overplaying a crappy pocket pair, trying to move a guy off a hand pre-flop. I actually liked the move, and I actually think it would have worked...except my mark happened to be sitting on aces. Whoops! :) He jammed it pre-flop and I was able to escape the hand, thank God, but not before I wasted a pretty penny on it. Them's the breaks.

Aside from all the crap moves I tried (and failed) to pull, I also just wasn't catching anything any more, and when I was, I would get no money. One sticks in my mind in particular: I flopped a set of fives (Presto!) on a flop of AK5, five-handed, and got zero action. How do you flop a set on a board of AK5 and get no one who caught a piece of that? So sad. :) The money I didn't lose bluffing I lost with loose calls that made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Oh, and one final indignity for the night: There were two, count 'em, two blind chops that I was aware of the whole time I was at the table. I was involved in both of them. In one of them, I had pocket aces. Doh!

Anyway. I became gradually and painfully aware that I was tired, hungry, and playing like crap, so I just decided it was time to eat my losses and call it a night. I left feeling pretty disappointed with myself. Mostly because not only was a playing really poorly, but I knew it, and I didn't (a) correct it, or (b) stop playing. I fell victim to that hope that I could just hit that one turnaround hand...that one miracle win that would put me back on track. More often than not, chasing such a thing is a fool's errand, and I really should know better. I'm glad I got up from the table basically under my own steam, like I didn't bust out or anything before I left, so at least I eventually took advantage of the knowledge that I was playing like crap. Just next time I hope to realize it sooner and actually do something about it. Second choice is getting up and leaving the table. First choice is, of course, to stop playing like crap and start playing better again. Next time.