Poker Hates Me

Kenny: It takes a certain kind of person to do what I do. No-one's ever impressed; no-one's ever fascinated. If you're a fireman, all the kids will want to jump on the back of the truck and follow you to a fire. There's going to be no kids willing to do that with me. So, I don't do it to impress people - it's a job, it's my trade, and I actually think I'm pretty good at it.

"Kenny"

Be patient with me, dear reader, for I will endeavour to do my best to not let this slide into a bad beat post. I promise I will not recount the hands card by card for you today.

Lets just accept it as fact that I have lost a few big hands lately when I was an overwhelming favourite going into the river. Ok? We all have an understanding here.

Why does poker hate me so? What did I ever do to it?

I was feeling pretty good too, mainly due to the banter going on at one of the tables I was at that really showcased the mentality of the players I was up against. For that short story, two players hit top pair on a flop and neither of them bet at it until the flush came on the river. Player A made the nut flush and won, while Player B whinged about how lucky the other guy was to hit it on the river. But he never bet out once in the hand, the player A got the turn and river for free – how can you blame anyone but yourself? Player B responded by saying he didn't want to loose his whole stack if the flush came (but was happy to call off 2/3rds of it when it did).

I think sometimes I give my opponents way too much credit. I noticed this the other week at the live game. Usually some of the most obvious tells you can put down to poor acting – but in time I realised that some of these people might not even know what an obvious tell is and therefore couldn't act to give that impression – in other words, this IS a tell. Man, it seems so obvious now but as I stated before as soon as I realised this I never had the chance to take advantage of the situation.

So I got good and smacked at the tables this week. Where does that leave me? Ah, no worse for wear really. I know I made the right decisions 90% of the time, and sometimes you just can't help bad luck. But are the poker demons trying to tell me something?

I also found myself cashing out of tables when I was up 20% on my buy in – which isn't all that bad but when you consider the stop limit when I am loosing is 100% then there is some obvious discrepancies going on that are not healthy for my game or my bankroll.

I have had something else on my mind of late, and I have been procrastinating getting it started for all the usual excuses – too hard, too much, no idea what I am doing and so on and so forth. Poker is an always welcomed distraction, but perhaps I should dedicate some more time around the interests that lurk in the back of my mind. Hey, it couldn't be any more of a waste than spending a few hours at the 50c/$1 tables, could it?

Trying to get another home game up and running this Friday night – it has been far too long between drinks. It might end up a very low buy-in game which means the Distraction could join the fray. I don't think she has played in a very long time, so that could end up mighty interesting.