today was a lesson in fear.
NEVER, can you let it dictate your actions.
playing cautious is another story, but fear can only bring bad things.
i was playing 1-2 at the venetian. max buy 300. i have 340ish and have position heads up with AQs. flop is queen, rag, rag. i raised 25 pre-flop. bet 30 on flop, possible straight on river. guy shuffles and ruffles counts his chips for like 30 seconds, then checks. i bet 60 and he goes all in for 131 more. i think about it for like 7 seconds then stack my chips and call. he instamucks.
now i'm up around 340 after an hour or so, so i go play in the one table satellite for 80, top 2 get $40 and 300 in tournament chips good for any of their tournaments. they have a daily 300+40, average pay-out is from 10,000 to 20,000.
i got semi-bluffed once, then blinded down so i had to make a bad call with 2 over cards. go out in like 6th place.
go play at 1-2 for a little while then move to 2-5. get up 120 in the must move game then get placed at one of the main games. i get called down with q4 off to my aq, guy wins with a pair of 4s. KK gets setted on and i lose the rest of my 500 buy-in.
totally unusual hand happens. blind has qq, 3rd has 99, 4th has jj, 5th has kk raises to 50, button smooth calls with aa, call call call, call. flop comes 10c, 10s, 8s. check to kk bets 75, aa raises to 150, qq goes all-in for 500ish. all fold. aa shows, qq asks if they want to see em. yes. then the talking begins. all in amazement at how it was played out.
i played for like 4 hours now with no cards at all. stayed even. then get kk in small blind. button raises 25 with ak, small blind calls with 1010. i raise 65, call call. flop comes j 9 3. i check, checks around. the worst mistake i've made since i've been here. turn is 8. sm bets 100. i call. 3rd worst play i've made since i've been here. river is q. he goes all in for 200. i call. second worst play i've made since i've been here. he turns over the straight and i graciously leave. knowing fully it was my own fault.
i got smacked around by the 2 worst players at the table for the first 500 and then i got tight and scared. i made a few good reads and laid down 10,10 to aa pre-flop. but what does it say to lose to the 2 worst players at the table? i think it means that they were the 2nd and 3rd worst players at the table. ha
the first donkey left right after he took my money. the other guy lucked around for like 1200 then left. the table filled up with a few rotating seats, but this was by far the best table i've ever played with. i am fully confident i can play with every player there, but i was playing scared and didn't get shit for the longest time.
oh well, back to the little tables where i've been one of the dominators. why did i ever leave? i know exactly why. i had to see where i was. and i found out i can't afford to play at that level yet. i know i can compete with them, but not now and not with my dinky bank roll.
"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult." -Seneca
if you have ever been deeply in love and have been cheated on, ripping your heart out only to put it back in upside down; this is the closest thing that i've experienced that comes close to the feeling of knowing that if you only would of done one thing differently you would have won instead of lost. (not to imply that you can affect the actions of an unloyal lover.)
i will continue my tour, but you all need to take the advise you keep giving. be patient. i don't plan to be home that quickly.
my ass is gonna clench up tighter than all these botox injecting old bitches. so much plastic surgery around here. when did small perky breasts become less attractive than grapefruits in pantyhose attached to a woman's chest?
gonna see about getting compted for rosanne barr tickets, and i am going out with Devon and Stacey to check out the stratosphere tomorrow after a nice home cooked meal. i've forgotten what that was like. then off to blow shit up in the desert, most likely on sunday. seriously Devon has a better arsenal than Katy and I had on average in GTA. (grand theft auto)
keep it coming and so will i
love and patience
MN
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2 comments:
Ugh. That was a painful read. I'm sure even more painful for you. Sorry.
You say that you had KK in the small and then say that the small had 1010. It appears you were actually the big blind. Doesn't really matter.
What was your thought process when you checked on the flop? There were realistically 4 hands that could have had you beat right (we can assume that even bad players wouldn't have called with anything worse than 33)? Even AA may have been unlikely given the raise, you re-raise wouldn't an AA come back over the top? Did you actually fear that you had been outflopped or were you going to check raise? If you were trying to trap them, your mistake wasn't about fear, it was about over-aggression.
I guess you really only only made one mistake - checking on the flop. After allowing the tens to get the free card which made him open-ended, it was going to be tough to get him out and simultaneously tough for you to get off the Kings with only undercards on the board.
Fear can be healthy. You should have feared the raise at the end, but you may have been pot comitted at that time. Don't worry, you will make it back. We are all rooting for you.
Shall we have a debate on the role of fear in our lives?
But maybe that will lead us to an argument over semantics. I agree that over-aggressiveness will usually be the culprit when things play out poorly in Travis's poker world.
Not in this last scenario, though. We've all kicked ourselves for that kind of fear. In poker, it seems to sink in for me when I haven't been paying attention to the player, or get intimidated, and just don't feel solid. So keep away the fear by being alert and trusting yourself. Easy for me to try to dispense advice, so far removed from where you are! It's not like I really ever feel like I know anything. I suppose I'm speaking generally, not poker-specifically. The more you know, the less you fear.
We knew you could do it out there because a) you got mad skillz. and b) you are crazy enough to handle the swings.
I love quotes but find very few I like to repeat that much. This is one of the latter, but it's one of my favorite about fear (also like the classic FDR one):
"Our greatest fear is not that we're inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure." Marianne Williamson.
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