September 17, 2004
Finally Feeling Like a Winner and Being One
Tonight, I had my first experience of having cards run over me, hit the flop and hold up. Even a bit of betting AK aggressively into weakness with either four-to-a-flush/straight or backdoor draws, spiking the A or draw and grabbing the pot. More than doubled up on both tables at .5/1. I love that I have now gone through thousands of hands, and, not only have I been able to identify certain weakness/question marks in my game, but I’ve actually been able to watch myself go through the cycles of bad beats, bad cards, good cards, and crazy wins a little – not a whole lot, but a little. When I was at the Palms, it was hard for me to judge myself because I simply didn’t play enough to ride out such things (and I was making mistakes at the same time); tons of fun, first casino experiences, lots of learning, but not a lot of sense of where I was going or how much was attributable to swings. Switching from 2/4 to .5/1 makes a big difference. I still have plenty of holes to fix, but at least I can pat myself on the back – I’m up at Party Poker, not even including the 200 bucks in bonuses they gave me. (That reminds me – more bonus whoring to be done…)
I have also found that the competition on Party is far, far weaker in the evening than during the day. Let me know what your experiences have been. The day time, you get loose, dumb, but pretty passive – just calling stations, not a lot of aggression, and when they show you aggression, you know it means trouble. At night, particularly tonight, you get people doing lots of preflop raising, auto-calling pre-flop raises and flop bets, and raising and reraising on the river without holding the nuts or anything remotely close to it. I hold the nut straight, they reraise; I hold the second to nut full house (board reads 88A9A), and they have a raising fest – he might have had an 8, but why was he just calling my flop and turn bets when I held an Ace? Why not raise? Same thing for nines. What could he have had? Did he hit a flush? Did he think I would have been betting the whole way and then raising and reraising without an A or 8?
The best part was that in other situations I was hitting the flop hard with other cards on board that made it appealing for others to come along. The last few sessions, I’ve been burning through chips calling(correctly, I’d say) with the small and middle pairs, and never hitting a set. Tonight, I had one time where I hit the a set of sevens with AQ7 rainbow on the board. By the river, there was a weak, very unlikely straight out there, which no one had, but boy did they have a raising fest – took down a 21 BB pot there. On a different hand, I raised pre-flop with JJ, and I ended up heads-up but with a little extra money in from people posting when they sat down. I hit a J, with an 8 and something like a 2 out there, rainbow. I check, he bets, I raise, he calls. Ace falls on the turn, I bet, he calls. K falls on the river, no flush possible, I bet, he raises. Would he have bet and called my raise on the flop with QT – just a three straight and one overcard? It’s possible, but I put him on AK or AJ. Iin this case, I had to go for it, counting on another raise from him to show me that he actually had it. I raise, he calls, he had AJ. Bingo. Then the guy swore up a storm in the chat window, cursed me to the high heavens, and it felt good.
So good.
Filed by at 2:32 am under dtrStories
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