Starting Off Stuck

Starting off stuck sucks.

The last three sessions I have played, I have started off stuck at least $1000.

In the first one on Sunday, I had just come off my three "perfect" sessions and I feel like I played really well to only lose $1500 in the first 6 hours of the session considering the bad luck I was experiencing. Hand after hand of losing the minimum still results in losing, though.

Around 2am (I started the session at 6pm) I found myself to the direct left of one incredibly loose player and another loose aggressive player. And to MY left, were two of the tighter players in the game. So things were looking up. My big hands started holding up, finally, and I caught a few lucky breaks and actually managed to end this 12 hour session up $1400!

The next day, I played in a game full of people who thought they knew what they were doing. Now this might seem like a bad game, but I'll let you in on a little secret: most of them were horribly mistaken! But as it is occasionally in this game, you can make every correct decision and still end up stuck $1000 in 4 hours. This used to get to my head; it used to make me play badly. I feel like I'm getting better at shutting these feelings out and focusing on playing every hand as best as I can. It helped to look around the table and see at least one person steaming about a bad beat. Each hand it was a different person, whoever lost the previous hand. All the while I was sitting there unaffected.

As is the case with the previous day, around 1-2am things finally started to turn around. I was stuck about $600 before this fateful hand. I raise QhJh in middle position after 2-3 limpers. It folds around to the SB who calls as does the BB and all the limpers. The flop is QdJd4h (a.k.a GIN!). Checks to me, I bet, SB (Tight aggressive player) raises, 1 cold caller, I 3-bet, SB caps and all call. At this point I'm trying to figure out what SB has as I'm quite confident the cold caller has a diamond draw. The SB could have the same hand as me, a big draw, or 44. I decide to wait for the turn to think any more about this. The turn is the Th giving me a flush draw now. SB bets out, 1 call, I raise, SB 3-bets, 1 cold call, I cap and both call. This cap might be a little suspect as SB has shown incredible strength so far. I probably wouldn't have capped without the flush draw or without the other person in the middle. With both of these, I figure that I have some extra odds in case SB has 44. The river is a beautiful 2h giving me a flush. SB bets, middle guy folds his diamonds angrily, I raise, SB says "Do you have AhKh?" and calls. I show my hand, and he shows AsKh! His comment is somewhat humorous considering that he has the Kh himself, but what is more shocking is that he managed to cap the flop with just a gutshot draw, get there, and then still lose. I talked to him a couple days later and he admitted that his flop cap messed up the hand. That pot (probably my biggest at $20/$40) was around $1200 with me contributing $360 of it and turned -600 into +200. I went on to push that to +$800 before leaving at 5am.

Over my "weekend" (Monday and Tuesday are now my weekend) I did some chores and took a break from poker. I got back to the casino at around 5pm on Wednesday and promptly was stuck $1000 at about 10pm. Same ole' same ole' right? Not quite. I feel I played this session really badly. I was missing bets and missing folds all throughout the night and was really at a loss for where I was in a lot of hands. I missed out on a spot to steal a multiway ~$800 pot with a well timed turn raise and made a few dumb turn checks that ended up costing me a few pots. A lot of this could be blamed on bad luck, but if I had played the hands correctly, my opponents would not have had the chance to get lucky. As it is when I play badly, I tend to stay longer than I should. At two different points in the night, I made it back to even (one time I was even +$200) but I didn't leave.

Amazingly enough, after a 21 hour session, I managed to leave at +$6 due to hitting a Royal Flush to win a $500 high hand (I consider this part of my poker winnings because I am forced to consider the $2 rake they take for this promotion as part of my poker losses). So all in all I'm relieved (maybe even exhilarated) to finish a session this long back to even, but also worried that I played so terribly throughout the day.

Hopefully I can avoid starting off stuck today :)