Every once in a while in any poker player’s life there will be times when it seems like you cannot win one pot for your life. Everytime you have bullets they seem to get cracked by some donkey playing 7-2 offsuit because they don’t know any better. You move all in late in the game short stacked with A-10 and get called by A-9 and you are thinking alright double up time!!!! Then the flop comes and you hit your 10 making the odds almost 100% in your favor and then they some how go runner runner to hit their straight, the only one they can hit that doesn’t give you something better. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?!?!?!? WTF?!?!?!? The best part is you get to watch your bankroll that you worked hard to build start to disinegrate before your eyes and it seems that there really is nothing that you can do about it. You rack your brain going through your moves hand by hand attempting to find the flaw in your game and see nothing, but since this is a skill game I am not going to blame this on “bad luck”. We did not blame it on good luck when we made our bankroll, we are certainly not going blame bad luck for losing it. There must be some flaw in our game that we are not seeing, a tell we have developed, faulty logic, calculating odds based on feeling instead of actual facts and science, something must be wrong. Maybe we just get so used to winning we feel there is no other option which is a good mind set to have going in to a game or tourney but not if it makes us lazy outside the tables or makes us stop paying attention during the game. So what do we do? Generally we beat ourselves up and think about how much we suck at this game and how we have no business playing this game to begin with. However we did build our roll successfully so there must be something we do right we just need to get back to that. In my opinion the best thing to do at a time like this is read for starters, if you are not already. Pick up anything poker and just read, get back to learning all the time, always getting better. Then I usually drop to a lower limit game, so that as I stuggle to figure things out my bankroll does not deplete quite as quickly.

Anyone looking to go on tilt?  I was on Chanpoker.com the other day and played in an awesome Sit-N-Go called MAD Tilt ALL-IN.  It has a couple of different buy in amounts.  Here is how it works – each player starts with 60 chips, the blinds start at 10/20 and it is winner takes all.  If you are looking to let loose after a bad beat and don’t want to us your whole bankroll to do it try these out.  It is a lot of fun and the only real issue is trying slow down when you are in a different type of game.

Ok so I this week I found my self playing in a cash game on Chanpoker and in one particular hand I found myself with pocket Aces or Bullets.  Now for those of you not all that familiar with the game, pocket Aces is the best possible starting hand and on a full table one of the only big hands you might not raise with as it is the kind of hand you want to invite action with.  Anyway since I wanted to get some people into this pot I just called the big blind as to not scare anyone off and risk winning the hand before the flop and not maximize potential earnings with this monster.  There are 3 other callers and the big blind checks.  The flop comes Jack – Ace – 5 with 2 diamonds.  At this point I am dancing as I have flopped top set meaning any hand anyone else could have hit is beat by mine as it was prior to the flop.  This might be a time I want to slow play and just check allowing the other players to either bet into me or see another card hoping to pick something up on the turn if they have nothing on the flop.  However in this situation, as big as my hand is, it is quite vulnerable.  I have to protect myself against both a flush and straight as both draws are out there.  I want bet big enough to hopefully push out people with the flush or straight draw so they don’t catch up on the turn or river yet small enough so that if anyone with a big Jack or a weak Ace can still call looking to pick up more later on or thinking they have the best hand.  Anybody with 2 pair or a smaller set at this point will most likely call any bet if not re-raise me so I am not worried about pushing them out.  I chose to bet a third of the pot, which in hindsight was probably not enough to accomplish what I wanted to do as it gives anyone on a draw 4 to 1 on their money and anyone with a flush has roughly a 36% chance to hit it with 2 cards still to come, making calling academic.  Anyway what ended up happening was everyone folded, meaning they all had no hand and no draw, so me betting was probably the wrong move but still one I think I would do in the future given the same situation, as I am a player that always protects my hands against any drawing hand.  Any thoughts?  What would you have done?