Poker, poker, and more poker

That was my weekend.  Poker, poker, and more poker.  On Thursday night I played until almost 2:00 in the morning despite the fact that I had to be at work at 8:00 am.  On Friday night I played until 2:00 am again and I played from 1:00 pm until about 8:00 pm on both Saturday and Sunday.  I have been in true grind mode lately and it certainly doesn't hurt that I have been winning.  I won all four of these weekend sessions and have won six out of seven sessions overall.

My best night was Friday night in that I played mistake free for over six hours.  That is not something that is easy to do and not something I claim often--to not make any mistakes over a six hour session.  But it was one of the best sessions that I played in a long time.  I did lose two big pots--one to start the night and one to finish--but even those hands I played perfectly and just got unlucky.

One of the first hands of the night I had 10 10 and called a raise from a pretty bad player.  The flop came 10 K Q.  He bet $30 and I made it $100 on the flop.  After some deliberation he called.  The turn came a 4 and he checked.  I bet the rest of my stack which was about $100 and he thought even longer but decided to call and when the 9 hit the river his JJ beat my set.

Towards the end of the night there was a pretty aggressive and impatient player who was losing who made it $135 to go (all in) preflop after a $5 straddle and a couple of calls.  I looked down at two black nines.  I studied for a while and came to the conclusion that I was probably 90% or better to have the best hand.  Having played with him many times I was almost 100% certain that if he had 10 10 or better he would not try blow everybody out like this.  He would definitely raise but he would want more action.  It was also late in the evening, he was ready to go and wanted to double up or lose his money.  I was certain that I had him and made the call.  Everyone folded and sure enough he turned over 67 and my read was "dead on balls accurate."  Unfortunately there is a lot of luck in poker and when 4 hearts hit the board his 6 of hearts made a flush and beat my pair of nines.

So in that session I had two hands that I played perfect, got it in as a big favorite and happened to lose both.  However the good news is that I was getting the best of it when I got in the middle.  Throughout the rest of the night I played flawlessly and did not get really unlucky other than those two hands.  Despite those two brutal beats I managed to win a couple hundred dollars on the night. 

When you can have two bad beats for decent size pots and still win hundreds of dollars it is very satisfying.  I will be taking a break tonight after playing 25 hours of poker over four days and will be back at it on Tuesday night.  Hopefully I will play just as well as I did over the weekend and fade the bad beats!

Disciplined Degenerate