Perspective And A Nice Win

It is kind of fucked how poker messes with your mind. One week you are the biggest loser in the world who could not win a hand if you sacrificed a virgin to the devil.. and the next week you are a ballah ready for the WSOP.

Last night I finally had the kind of night I want to have EVERY week. I was helped along by the high hand jackpot too. Poker is funny because the entire night came down to one hand that normally I would not gamble on.

I was in late position and raised to like $15. I had been up and down all night. I started out good when my kings held vs a guys overplayed tptk. I try and keep these overcard hands small, but the guys playing top pair try and make them huge. I then had my Queens cracked by bottom pair who rivered his Ace. That one hurt. I paid off an old guy too which always is a bad idea.. never pay off an old guy.

So anyways I was sitting with $75 and had my $15 in the pot.. and this guy a few seats after me jams all in. He has me slightly covered. I had Ace Kang. Now in my opinion in a cash game there are better spots than all in pre-flop with AK. However I had seen this guy jam one time before.. and he showed AQ. I am thinking - fuck it.. I am down a bit, I have a really good chance of dominating him, and fucking hell I should gamble more maybe. I make the call and the flop comes KKA. The guy has AQ so my read was dead on. This hand qualified me for the high hand jackpot which runs every 20 minutes.. If this hand happened like a couple hours earlier I would have made $600... but we were at the $300 portion of the every 20 minute promotion so say-la-vee.

I had to sweat out 18 minutes of the 20 minutes until my hand was declared the winner. I ignored the clock until it got down to like four minutes... then it was impossible to ignore... a few seconds after I won someone hits quad threes.

In one hand I was suddenly up $375. I tipped the dealer $25 and topped my stack off with the remaining $75.. I was entirely tempted to leave because how could it get any better than that? I stayed though because it was early and the table was very sociable and interesting.

I finished up with a net profit of $425. With the larger stack I was able to win some bluffs, and got lucky on a few more hands.. hitting good flops and the like.. I got a little spewy at times but nothing horrible.

Poker is funny. It fucks with your mind. If I lost the AK hand maybe I am writing that I suck at poker and never should call pre-flop with AK. Last week I pushed a diamond flush and gutterball draw and called it a shit move.. but it was a gutsy poker move, and had a ton of fold equity.. maybe I just need to stop searching for what is right and just play. I always seek the absolute right answer and maybe there is not one. Who knows.

I am pretty happy so far. It has not been perfect. I have had 8 sessions. Two of them have been losing my entire buyin. The first one was my first time back and I was rusty and was getting setup a bit with the cards. I played sucky too. My next two sessions were good sized wins. I then had a couple of tiny wins followed by a decent win because I said awfuckit in a 4-way pot vs lose players with AJ s00ted. Do or die! My last session I played good and I played bad. I tilted and spewed. Finally this last time I put it all together, got lucky, and had a monster session. I am averaging 2.3BB which is a good rate.. and I am up around $260 for the sessions. I so wish I had a casino in Boston. Ah well.