Tonight's play

Up $10.05 in just over 2 hours on the $20 NL tables at Gaming Club. Not terrible, not great. I was patient. I didn't try steals or crazy plays. Both of those things are definite improvements over how I had been playing previously. I had QQ three times, and raised it big preflop all three times. Twice the flop came with overcards, I bet anyway & got re-raised big & dropped it. The third time I won a small pot when undercards came.

I also caught TPTK with AJ and bet out, kept betting out against two callers, and had to drop it when the board went to 4-straight and a guy went all-in.

So my good hands aren't doing that much, no great luck, but I'm still up for the night. I need to feel good about that. I can't even remember the last time I had AA. I'm playing OK with not so great cards, which is good.

I identified a few more crazy calling stations who called me down with who-knows-what and lost to my top pair type hands. That was nice. That was mostly very early in the evening -- I was actually up about 15 bucks in the first twenty minutes.

The only biggish hand of the evening that I remember: I had T8o, hopefully in a blind. (I'm pretty sure it was a blind because I tightened up a bunch tonight -- probably all the way from LAG to sLAG.) Hit my T as top pair on the flop (T74), bet out most of the pot, get a caller. Check down the turn, which brings the 3rd flush card. Get my 8 on the river and bet another $1.00. I'm raised to $5.00. Oh crap do I call? Think & think. Finally call. He had 84o -- had hit bottom pair on the flop, and then bet big with his own two pair on the river. This guy had over 40 bucks at the table despite the fact that he was playing hands like that -- I saw him show down a similarly dreadful hand earlier.

I tend to only bet about 2/3 of the pot most of the time when I hit. I'm not sure why. If I raised it to full pot I wonder if my results would be better. I need to make myself try that, at least for a few sessions, sometime soon.

I think part of the reason I bet 2/3 pot is that I like to try to make steals of pots that I think might be unwanted. Sometimes I make very dumb steal attempts, though. But when I do that, I much prefer to bet say 75 cents into a $1.25 pot. That way I only have to win the pot say 40% of the time to break even. On the other hand, maybe I get called more often when my bets aren't quite pot-sized. Also, I definitely should work harder to tighten up my steal attempts.

The last hand of the night cost me a few dollars. It was the last hand because it was so dumb I couldn't believe I had done it. Sigh. I got K5s in the SB, tried a steal raise and got re-raised right back. Did I drop it? No! Did I call his minbets on the flop & turn hitting nothing, and then try a stupid almost pot-sized bet on the river that was called? Yes, I did. I admit it. He had JJ and all the cards were T or lower so there was no way he was folding. Sheesh. I should have dropped it preflop.

EXERCISE FOR THE EVENING. Meditate on this, Kent: when a player has yet to act at all in a hand, IT IS TOO EARLY TO PUT THEM ON A HAND. Just because he's in the BB doesn't mean he HAS to have crap. IF YOU ARE RE-RAISED ON A STEAL ATTEMPT, DROP IT. It looks weak, but it's sometimes good to have a weak image. Next time I try a steal attempt and HAVE a hand and somebody plays back at me thinking I'm weak, I'll be a happy man.

So the last hand lost me about 4 bucks. How stupid is that? Glad I quit when I did. Should have quit 1 hand earlier. :-)