Saturday, January 22, 2005

Play, not results

Man, what a long night.

I played for probably six hours or so yesterday. I started out on Stars, and unlike the usual tighter play that seems to personify Stars, I actually had a maniac at my table and was pretty excited at the possibility of taking down a couple of big pots. When I got on the table, the maniac had about $15, and proceeded to go on a run in which he won 8 hands straight, running that $15 up to over $60. Why doesn’t a rush like that ever happen to me? After playing my for about an hour, seeing hardly a face card, and getting blinded and missing some flops, I finally pick up AJ UTG + 2 so I raise and only have 2 callers, one of them being the maniac. Flop brings 2s 3s Jd TPTK, I bet, maniac raises, third player drops, I reraise, maniac call. Turn is my third Jack. The maniac caps the turn with me. Sweet. River brings 5 of spades, I bet, another raise so I just call, and sure enough, he flips over 10-7s for the flush. Capped the turn with less than the nut flush draw? WTF?!!!! Needless to say, Zip Zoom TILT. Intellectually I know I want people at my table playing like that, but that doesn’t always help. I bled away another 5 BB before finally leaving with what little was left of my buy in. Losing almost 10BB’s on a hand like that was pretty goddamn disheartening.

I know that I’m steaming pretty bad, so I shut it down, do a few dishes, and hit the shower in an effort to wash away some tilt, and it helped somewhat. I played earlier in the day on Party for about an hour, ending the session up about 9 BB to bring my free money roll to $61. I thought, “Why the hell not?” I played a couple of hands, and then remembered, “Hey you’ve been observing the Stud tables for a couple of days now, and they seem damn fishy as well, you should go fleece those.” Great idea.

Now, for anyone who hasn’t noticed yet, or who may give a shit, the ante on Party is HIGH on the low limit stud. .25/hand at .50/1 and 1/2, which is 5x’s higher than Stars for the same level. I figure that’s a 30BB buy-in, which I know is short, but I’m not going to get anywhere being a punk, and I can play Stud well (it’s not very tough if you have even a little bit of intelligence and observation). Let’s make a run at these fish.

As I watched the chips fly around between the fish, the hardest thing was just waiting for the proper cards and not gamboling. 3…2…..1…Let the fishy suckouts begin. The worst being running two’s on 4th and 5th street to give some douchebag a full house 2’s over 3’s to my made nut flush. Four giant suckouts total, to knock me down to a paltry $9. I was pissed, but not tilted (yes, I think there is a difference) and just buckled down even harder to wait for what I figured would be my last hand. FINALLY, things turned. I got trip 10’s to double me up to $18. I had two more hands that actually didn’t get sucked out, one being quad 6’s which ran me all the way back up to $62. I played one more hand and got nailed again, so I just left with my $57 for a day’s profit on Party of five whole dollars. Not bad for four hours of play, lol.

Do I recommend the Party Stud game? You bet your ass I do. Just go into it knowing there is going to most likely be some freakin’ HUGE swings. There was only one other good player on my table, and he was able to run his $50 up to almost $200 in that 3 hour span. One of these days I’m going to actually have a substantial winning session on Party. I always seem to end up with a piddly profit after being forced to climb out of a giant suckout hole, or get knocked back down by suckouts after I make a nice score. I can’t seem to tell whether or not I’m doing something wrong, or that’s just the way it has been going. If it is something I’m doing wrong, I know it’s just that one tiny little thing I haven’t seen yet, and when I do, it will put me over the top.

Oh yeah, and Poker Gods, if you’re listening, I’m still waiting on that rush.

I played some more Stud on Stars this morning and made back the 18BB’s that I lost yesterday, so I feel much better now. Slowly but surely, focusing on play and not short term results is sinking in. VERY slowly. Hopefully today/tonight will be better as I plan on playing some more because I still have that damn bonus to clear. Boy, how slow am I?

Play, not results. Play, not results. I’m Thinking Big, while my head remains Much Bigger.