after a long absence

It's been a long, long time since my last post. Mainly this is due to personal reasons that I won’t go into, since those who read this and know me will already know them, and anyone stumbling on this blog who doesn’t know me won’t care.

Anyway, after a reasonable, focussed run that put me into the mid-$60s bankroll-wise I went on a horrendous run where I wasn’t paying much attention or playing for any of the right reasons and duly dropped into just below $30! Realising that I wasn’t in any correct frame of mind, I’d deliberately avoided playing again… until now.

I played two sessions on Saturday and Sunday respectively which could not have been more different in the run of cards I had, and profited on both. Saturday I got hit by the deck, getting a good run of pocket pairs, making boats from marginal BB hands, and getting my money in and getting paid off on the premium hands. I ended up cashing out with $9 from a $3 buy-in.
It could have been much more, but sadly I got sucked out on a 3-way $13 pot. Fortunately the fish who called a large preflop bet with KTs then thought that a pair of Kings on an Ace-high flop with inside straight draw (other player had AK so fish was drawing dead to anything else) was worth going all-in with had the smallest stack of the three of us, so I still made a teeny profit when the Q hit and wrecked my set.

I have player notes on this player now - they simply say, 'Kick this guy in the throat'.
In fairness though, by the time I’d left he’d given me most of that money back.

Sunday’s session was the polar opposite. The highest pocket pair I was dealt during the whole game was Nines, and the best non-paired hand breakdown was as follows:
AQh once – on BB, all folded ahead of me acting.
AKo once – on Button, all folder ahead of me. Blinds fold to my 3xBB raise.
AQs once – mid-position, early raise of 4xBB. Raiser folds to my min-reraise.

Other than that, it was low pocket pairs and other fairly marginal hands all the way. I ended with a $2 profit, but I felt more proud of my performance on Sunday than Saturday. Without big hands, I found two things.

1) Playing fewer hands, I decided to watch hands I wasn’t involved with and attempt to put people on possible cards based on their betting. I found I’m a lot better at this than I used to be. Still though when I’m in the hand I sometimes second-guess or disregard my initial correct read and get punished for it!
2) Just playing position and having a good read on your opponents and what they might have and what they might be afraid of, you can still pick up some decent sized pots with nothing or very little.

Looking through my hand history, I only took part in a handful of showdowns, and won two. The best hand I ever made in the session was top two-pair and my biggest pot win was with pocket-8s on a 7-high flop/turn (taking a nice chunk from a guy with K7 who judged himself owner of top kicker). The rest of my wins were all through carefully considered betting.

So, a pretty positive session to get me back into the game.


Week's Profit: $7.90
Current Bankroll: $39.25