Days Like This

Some days at the poker table remind me of this Van Morrison song.

Thursday's session was absolutely horrid in the beginning.  I got to the poker room around 5pm, and by 9:30pm or so I was in 10 racks.  By the time I quit, I finished off with a little less than a 4 rack loss.  For the first 4 hours or so, I just lost and lost and lost, mostly to absurd hands, but some I played badly too.

I guess if the first two hands I played were any indication of the type of day I was going to have, I should have just got up and quit.  First hand I played, a local business man, who shows up on occasion and always makes for a good game, cold-called my early position raise with jack-ten offsuit.  I happened to have ace-king offsuit.  I bet flop, turn, and river, on a 4246T rainbow board.  He just called on the river and was relieved to see that I just had ace-high.  This is a very thin value bet by me, as I know he will call me with ace-high as well and sometimes even king-high.  Plus I am always value betting thin, and check-calling this river or check-folding makes it too easy to play against me.

Second hand I played this day a few hands later, same gentleman opens in MP, gets 3-bet by Laurie, button cold-calls, and I call with 22 in the SB.  Pot goes off 4-handed, and I flop the world 2JJ.  I check, opener bets, Laurie raises, button folds, I 3-bet, opener caps, Laurie calls.  Turn is a 6, I check, opener bets, Laurie calls, I raise, both call.  River is a Q.  I bet, he calls, Laurie now raises, I hate life and call, and get overcalled as well.  Laurie has QQ for the nut boat, and the opener had AJ.  Very sick cooler, that if we had a 5-bet cap, will play differently, or if I had just lead the turn, I'm fairly sure that AJ will raise and then Laurie would fold, and I would win the pot.  However, in the long run, getting 5 bets out of 2 players is better than getting 4-bets out of 1 player, and I have Laurie drawing super slim, while AJ still has like 17% equity in the pot, so getting it heads up with him is actually not super desirable.  An expert probably bet/folds that particularly river, but I don't like shrimp cocktail.  Plus, I am not as expert as I seem.

Then as the night progresses, the opposite seems to happen, and I simply can't lose a hand.  The local pro in the game is winning as well, and the wanna-be-pro is simply fading fast and can't seem to win a hand before he goes busto and the game breaks not too soon thereafter.  I did play this hand, and lost to Andy's 93o.  As I go through the hand again, I am not sure if I played it badly or not, but does make me think about what my range needs to be in this particular spot, where I just call the flop and then c/r the turn.

Fast forward to Saturday night, and it's simply a continuation of my last session in which I can do no wrong.  The lineup is simply awesome, with angry Sean in 1, Rajan the king in 2, Andy in 3, Jed for part of the time in 4 and then Asya for a little bit, Helen in 5 and then she moved into 8, Jon in 6, Amir in 7, and an unknown from Los Angeles in 8 until he busted.  Andy had the Jesus seat, and I like to make my office in the 9 seat.  I generally don't seat change unless the wheels are falling off the bus, and I just hunker down in seat 9 and adjust to the players at the table as necessary.

And I just won and won and won.  When I finally quit, I had to grab a rolling table to escort my 9 racks of chips to the cage.