Growing My Game

I still have to write up Vegas Sunday and Vegas Monday. Those are the last two of my trip reports. Strange how Marty leaves me out of the brownshirt memories. Considering I took most of his money. Lay off the booze man, its rotting your brain.

Marty is getting married. Who's up for a BP in LV? Thats my next trip to Vegas. Please Marty, don't screw this one up.

So I am itching to write this before I can finish the trip reports.

I am a much better poker player now than I was last week. I just wish I had the time to continue to build. I regularly beat out home game. When I say regularly I mean if there are 8 of us playing I am at least a 2-1 favorite to cash. I know what moves work against which guys, I know which guys are rocks (RTT). I know which are passive-weak and I know who to go to war with only the best of hands.

When I play the NL game a Harrah's I am usually a tight-somewhat aggressive player. I am cautious as this post will show you. But when I know I am in the lead I make move after move to get all my money in. For instance: I am in the 3 seat and guy in the 4 seat I notice is playing every A. I get into a 3 way flop with him and the BB. I hold pocket 3's. Flop comes down A X 3. I know, KNOW, that he hit 2 pair with his A junk. This hand is all but over. He has to pair the board. I check-call his flop bet. I bet out the turn and call his 2x pot raise. I move in on the river. He was playing Ax off.

Playing on Thursday and Friday of last week I was sure that every raise had AA or KK behind it. I thought that my TPTK was beat by 2 pair, you get the idea. I had no confidence. Here I was playing NL in Las Vegas. WTF did I know? I was the fish, right. I had to be. Well my nervousness and weak play made me a fish. A self fullfilling prophesy. Felicia explained this to me in about 10 minutes on Saturday.

I, basically, know how to make a laydown and made that my best move at all the wrong times. I was overvaluing big hands AA, AK and undervaluing modest ones, AQ, AJ adown to KJ and J10. EP could only be raising with AA, right? This was compounded by the fact that none of my small pairs turned sets and all of my big hands ran into monsters.

A hand that illustrates this point. I am SB with TT. BB is Pretty Boy Eric from LA. he raises my call. I call. Flop is 75A. It ends up that we check it down. I don't check down. I bet to see where I am. He shows KK. I easily could have got him off this hand but I was being a big p#ssy.

What was going on?

1.) I was scared of not winning. I usually pull out of Harrahs as a winner. But I usually play a good session and hit a monster. I put big expectations on myself (and bankroll) entering this trip.
2.) I have been playing online in preparation for Vegas. No time to get to the casino. My cold deck was about 2 hours long. This is about the same number of hands as in a 45 minutes online session. I was impatient. I wanted the nuts and I wanted them NOW.
3.) I was willing to gambooooooollllll! In a cash game I accepted a 50-50 preflop odds? Come on. I don't call/move in preflop with AK in a cash game. Thats a tourney move. I need to be the aggressor preflop with AK. I don't call off my stack, ever. (unless I'm trapping of course)
4.) I was unwilling to make a bad move. The 10-10 story above illustrates. I didn't want to make a bad move and look like an idiot. Of course this guy has an A. How else could he have raised preflop?
5.) I had too much money in my pocket and not enough in play. The thought of a rebuy made me sick and secure at the same time.

What have I learned?
1.) I am not nearly as good as I thought I was last Wednesday.
2.) I am not nearly as bad as I thought I was last Friday.
3.) The majority of the players at the 1-2 NL table at the MGM suck.
4.) I need to play my game no matter what.
5.) I need to prep for vegas in the casino, not online.
6.) I need to think about the cards in my hand and the current situation, not about how 20 minutes from now I'll be rollin' in it.
7.) I am no longer afraid. Hear that? I have gone to vegas and dropped half my bankroll. It hurt, but I lived.
8.) I could be a good limit player. I really hit those limit tables for a bunch of money. It really is a different animal. As soon as I learned how and when to draw, I started cleaning up hitting st8s and flushes. The low limit limit fish table is way beatable. Super aggressive play with monsters is one key. They will call you all the way down, with 8 high.