tired play, and big pairs

With my girlfriend away off biting other men, I've seized the chance to play as much as possible. Which is great, except I'm stil not recovered from weekend's excesses as so have been playing while utterly exhausted. This was particularly apparent on Monday - I bust myself pretty quickly, rebought and worked my way all the way back up into profit, then lost it all again on the final hand of the night.

The only postive of the night was that I got some nice experience in making and playing straights. I've realised that I get rather too attached to the idea of drawing on an open-end or double belly-buster straight or to a flush, which costs me when they don't hit. But when it's been made cheap enough to draw to, the straight is a great hand because it's much less obvious than the flush. Any fool can count three of a suit on the board, but when there's [K, 9, 6, 5] rainbow there's not too many people holding a King who are scared of [8,7]!
So, my focus now is going to be maintaining discipline and assessing the actual pot odds when deciding on whether to call on a draw. Implied odds obviously matter here too, no point calling a bet if it's going to mean either myself or the bettor being all-in because then there's no extra turn/river bet to profit from. Chasing draws when I DON'T have good pot odds is definitely a leak for me at the moment, my last few stupid big losses were all from chasing straights and flushes that didn't materialise.

Tuesday, I was still pretty tired, but didn't actually play too badly. I didn't play as much as I could have, mainly due to connection problems on Party. Then when I finally got back on, every 3 hands the table I was on got taken down for maintenance! So, with the various hassles I kind of didn't realise that I'd made money until I added it up today. Sadly it wasn't enough to fully reverse the horrible loss on Monday, but at least I'm now quite as down as I could have been.

I've put up two hands from Tuesday, the first I thought was fun just from the fortuitous appearance of three big hands all in one pot. (click to see hand)

Big Pair Three-way

#Game No : 6439161545
***** Hand History for Game 6439161545 *****
$5 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Tuesday, October 23, 15:58:45 ET 2007
Table Table 127739 (Real Money)
Seat 1 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 3: x__BShark__x ( $4.55 USD )
Seat 5: LEKDJ ( $1.23 USD )
Seat 7: reno_man001 ( $5.10 USD )
Seat 8: TS99_87 ( $5.94 USD )
Seat 9: peck3r ( $3.18 USD )
Seat 10: DavidLarsen ( $6.98 USD )
Seat 4: e_r_c ( $2.92 USD )
Seat 6: Dixvins ( $2.68 USD )
Seat 1: Nextone7777 ( $1.92 USD )
Seat 2: HoneyJar ( $4.96 USD )
HoneyJar posts small blind [$0.02 USD].
x__BShark__x posts big blind [$0.04 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to e_r_c [ Ad Ac ]
e_r_c calls [$0.04 USD]
LEKDJ folds
Dixvins folds
reno_man001 raises [$0.08 USD]
TS99_87 folds
peck3r folds
DavidLarsen calls [$0.08 USD]
Nextone7777 folds
HoneyJar folds
x__BShark__x calls [$0.04 USD]
e_r_c raises [$0.46 USD]
reno_man001 calls [$0.42 USD]
DavidLarsen calls [$0.42 USD]
x__BShark__x folds
** Dealing Flop ** [ 4c, 8s, Tc ]
e_r_c is all-In [$2.42 USD]
reno_man001 calls [$2.42 USD]
DavidLarsen: QQ
DavidLarsen folds
** Dealing Turn ** [ Qs ]
** Dealing River ** [ 7d ]
e_r_c shows [ Ad, Ac ]a pair of Aces.
reno_man001 shows [ Kc, Kh ]a pair of Kings.
e_r_c wins $6.12 USD from the main pot with a pair of Aces.
DavidLarsen: grrr!!!

I think I played the above hand pretty well. On the flop I moved in for the following reasons. First, with a rags flop and with the level of preflop betting I didn't think anyone would have stayed in with a pocket pair below Jacks. I also didn't want to be second-guessing myself too much on the turn and river, so getting my money in while I was most likely ahead seemed the best plan.
It was fortunate for me I did, as you can see if I'd slowplayed the hand at all then DavidLarsen would have stolen it on the turn.

Another lesson in not slowplaying Aces was my final pot of the night, alonlu123's weak bet on the flop makes it worth me seeing the turn with my middle pair /overcard and I get some nice help and break him.

Cracking Aces

#Game No : 6439576391
***** Hand History for Game 6439576391 *****
$5 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Tuesday, October 23, 18:55:37 ET 2007
Table Table 126296 (Real Money)
Seat 3 is the button
Total number of players : 9
Seat 1: Carsten1081 ( $3.65 USD )
Seat 5: JanssonJ ( $0.29 USD )
Seat 6: alonlu123 ( $1.54 USD )
Seat 2: geordie_dave ( $4.25 USD )
Seat 4: hansdampf101 ( $4.04 USD )
Seat 8: chrizbradley ( $4.28 USD )
Seat 3: e_r_c ( $5.04 USD )
Seat 7: johoy ( $3.29 USD )
Seat 10: LuxStyle ( $5.37 USD )
hansdampf101 posts small blind [$0.02 USD].
alonlu123 posts big blind [$0.04 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to e_r_c [ 6c Ac ]
johoy folds
chrizbradley raises [$0.12 USD]
LuxStyle folds
Carsten1081 folds
e_r_c calls [$0.12 USD]
hansdampf101 did not respond in time
hansdampf101 folds
alonlu123 raises [$0.16 USD]
chrizbradley calls [$0.08 USD]
e_r_c calls [$0.08 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ Kd, 6h, 2h ]
alonlu123 bets [$0.24 USD]
chrizbradley calls [$0.24 USD]
e_r_c calls [$0.24 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 6d ]
alonlu123 bets [$0.48 USD]
chrizbradley calls [$0.48 USD]
Knifkator has joined the table.
e_r_c raises [$2.20 USD]
alonlu123 is all-In [$0.62 USD]
chrizbradley folds
** Dealing River ** [ Jh ]
e_r_c shows [ 6c, Ac ]three of a kind, Sixes.
alonlu123 doesn't show [ Ad, As ]two pairs, Aces and Sixes.
e_r_c wins $1.10 USD from side pot #1 with three of a kind, Sixes.
e_r_c wins $3.82 USD from the main pot with three of a kind, Sixes.

This Week: -$1.17
Total: $53.57