Duh..

Well that was fun.

As predicted, 2 days after I posted my winning streak the poker gods slapped me in the face with a ridiculous day of losses. Can’t say I blame them, it’s not nice to inflate a man’s sense of poker self worth.

In the midst of a losing session, I decided to play cash games. Loaded up just 1 1/2 NL 6 max table, and dropped a buy-in within about an hour. Good times. So rather than the month of February being one of my all time best, it looks like it may be one of my all time worst if I just play somewhat average the rest of the month.

I’m really at a loss for my cash game performance. I didn’t lose my buy-in in one fell swoop, it was a gradual loss over about 5 biggish hands – all of them loosing of course. Looking back on each hand I don’t see how I could have played it any better, just got unlucky. It’s good to know that I can put my opponents on mid pair when they are calling my pot size bets to the river, but when said mid pair trips up on the river, there is nothing you can do.

I think one of the biggest problems I have in cash games is I don’t make enough off my big hands to counteract the inevitable losing hands that come about. For example, I had QJo and I limped in from first position (6-max). SB completed and the BB checked. Now just to get some info out, the SB was a giant fish with a VPP over 60% and was calling me down often with any pair, any draw. The BB was a multitabling tight aggressive player who up to this point I hadn’t seen play a meaningful pot. Ok so the flop comes 9T2 rainbow, giving me the straight draw and 2 overs. The SB bets out a minimum bet, which he pretty much always did, then the BB raises him 3x his bet. At this point, I really don’t know what to make of the BB’s raise, but I decide to call and the SB surprisingly folds. Turn brings another 2 and the BB checks, I check behind. River brings a K making the board read 9T22K giving me the “nut” straight. Of course the board is paired so a full house is possible. At this point the BB bets big into me. Now I know he is tight, solid and playing multiple tables. It is quite possible he has a full house here if he re-raised with 2 pair on the flop (92, T2 or maybe a set of nines or tens). Additionally if he is good, he may be able to put me on exactly QJ since that is how QJ may play that hand, and knows that I just hit my straight and will reraise the river. Just so you know, this is how a paranoid, risk averse, player who is running bad thinks – always imagining the worst case scenario. Anyways, because I can’t put him on a hand that would call a reraise that I have beat, I decide to just call his big bet. He of course flips over KT for top 2 pair and I take the pot. A much smaller pot than it may have been.

This type of hand comes up all the time. And I often fail to extract the maximum value from the hand, fearing that I’m beat. I have an inherent fear of raising the river without the nuts against strong players. Sure, it saves me money when I am actually beat, but thinking back to many hands where I declined to reraise, and ended up showing down a much stronger hand than them, I think that I’m missing out. All these missed out reraises and value bets add up of course. And in a session where you just can’t seem to make a really strong hand, or get action when you do make a strong hand, these value bets are your key to a winning session.

Thinking back on that last hand, I think a min raise was in order on the river. If he then comes over the top I can fold knowing that he must have a boat. But many players will make a call of a min raise with the worst hand just out of curiosity. I know I do.