"A Hard Way To Make An Easy Living..."

Not sure who first said that famous quote about poker being a hard way to make an easy living, but they sure did get it right. Damn, is this a frustrating game. You can do EVERYTHING right, and still lose a bundle, and then you can turn around and do something stupid and make that money back. So what does that teach us? Stupid play is smart play? No, of course not. But...

I played a lot of poker today. Actually, I played a lot of small sessions of poker today. I was stuck at home most of the day, so I kept sneaking into Full Tilt to play 30 hands here, 25 hands there. Each time I sat down to play, I reminded myself to play perfect poker. Unfortunately, perfect poker does not necessarily mean perfect profit, at least not in the short term.

The day started off on a couple of brutal nearly back-to-back losses. I was playing $5NL cash (9 handed) when I was dealt KK early in the first session. Per plan, I got all the money into the middle of the table preflop, only to have the opp turn over AA. Kiss $5 down the drain. About twenty hands later, I had the same EXACT thing happen. My KK lost to another opp's AA. Another $5 down the tubes.

So, truth be told, I started tilting a little. I open raised in MP with 75s (yes, seven-friggin'five-friggin'-suited). I got two loose callers and I realized I was being stupid, but then the flop came a beautiful 6-8-4 two-tone, and I was able to entice a bluff raise from the late position caller. I min 3bet him, he shoved, and all the money went in. The opp turned over KQ of hearts, giving him a flush draw, but I manged to fade the third heart and scooped a big pot.

A few hands later, I shoved on a late position raiser from BB with QQ, only to get called by AA. Arhghg. Kiss the 75s profit down the tube. The bulk of the day went this way: Big downswings, followed by me making some kind of miracle comeback, followed by more big downswings. The odd thing is the big losses were all the result of "perfect poker," while some (not all, but some) of the big upticks were the result of me getting lucky or sucking out.

The only bright spot to this debacle is I was more or less even when I started my final extended play evening session. By then, I was multi-tabling $10NL 6max, and, despite what the day had been telling me about stupid vs. good play, I was still trying to play perfect poker. Fortunately, the poker gods finally decided to stop toying with me, and playing correct poker started to pay off. I hit some sets and got paid off.* In the end, I made just under $20 for the day, averaging $3.36/100 hands (yes, I was 4-tabling most of the time), or ~6BB/100 hands played. Not bad, and about what I should expect as a result of perfect poker.

All-in for now...
-Bug
*A rule I'm following pretty religiously lately that seems to be paying off is the small-medium pair rule I learned from the grinderschool vids. If I have a small to medium pair, I should call a raise if the effective stack size (the smaller of the opps and my stack size) is greater than 15x the raise amount. If it's under 15x, I fold. If it's 15x or greater, I call with the intention of folding if I don't hit my set. Occasionally, if the opp has significantly less than 15x the raise amount (say, he's all in for a 4x raise) I might call if I can be assured of being heads up with him. In all other cases, I fold.