Worst. Session. Ever.

I was all set to write about how I have been doing much better at limit poker lately. I’ve been up in most of my recent sessions, to the point where I could finally say that I was a profitable ring game player, and I had built myself a pretty large hole to climb out of. Then I went and had the worst session of my short poker playing life.

I spent most of Saturday working in the yard, digging out a spot for my wife’s vegetable garden. We actually finished that task in a reasonable amount of time (we are real good at underestimating the time/effort these types of things take), but being the lazy out of shape guy that I am, I was pretty sore and exhausted when we were done. What better way to relax than to fire up some online poker and take some money from suckers?

I planned on playing at Poker Room, since it has been a while since I’ve played there. I sat down and had a full orbit before the blinds would get to me, so I opened up Party Poker just for the hell of it. My friend Noah was playing, so I figured, what the hell? I’ll sit down with him instead.

Once I sat down, almost nothing went right for me. I didn’t any decent hole cards, and when I did, they almost always missed the flop. In the rare event that I actually got a piece of the flop, I would either have the second best hand, or someone else would be drawing to a hand that would end up beating me on the river. For the most part, I think I played pretty well. It was just one those times when the cards don’t fall your way.

There were a few instances where I could have stopped the bleeding, and not given away quite as much as losing. Cases where I probably should have known I was beaten, or at least considered it, and not bet as hard I did. For example I saw a flop with 96o out of the big blind. The flop was 789 rainbow, giving me top pair and an open ended straight draw. The turn is a 5 giving me the straight, and I execute ye olde check-raise, getting two callers. The river is an Ace, and I hope someone stuck around with Ax. I bet out, and get raised. A couple of reraises later, and my nemesis turns over TJ for the flopped nut straight. I probably should have seen that coming since he bet on every street, and raised on river. That could have saved me a few bucks. Instead I was focused on my made crappy hand.

I think I found one other leak in my game, and that is defending my blinds a little too aggressively. I found myself calling preflop raises out of the big blind with just about any two cards, and out of the small blind with way too many crappy hands. This leads into the situation where I hit middle pair on the flop, and can’t call a bet anyway, because I know at least one person has me beat. I need to go back and review that past session, to look for some other mistakes that I may have made.