Poker Amnesia

Another thing I forgot to mention in yesterday's post about my atrocious play over the past few months is my apparent memory loss problem when set-mining. In reviewing my PT3 stats I ran across this same thing, over and over: I'm dealt a small to medium pair in LP; call it eights. An UTG player opens with a raise. It folds to me, and we're both sufficiently deep stacked that I can profitably set mine. The flop comes rags that are all lower than my snowmen. The UTG player checks to me, and I fire out a 0.5-0.75 pot size bet. Nine times out of ten, of course, he either comes along, which forces me to fire another wasted barrel on the turn (or just give up), or he CR's me, and I'm forced to shut it down (which I didn't do in a couple of instances, and lost a lot of money. Dumb, dumb, dumb.) In other words, I forgot why I was in the hand in the first place, which was to hit a set. It wasn't to outplay my opponent, it wasn't to bully an EP power player off a hand, it wasn't to stay in the hand and hope for miracle turn cards..... It was TO GET OFF THE DAMN HAND WHEN IT DIDN'T HIT THE SET! In other words, when I don't hit a set in that situation, I need to remember to just shut it down and move on. Grrrr. This is such an amateur mistake, but, for whatever reason (fatigue, too much late night poker in hotel rooms, distracted play, early onset Alzheimer's, etc..) I've succumbed to it a lot in the last few months. I repeat: Grrrr. Or did I already say that?

All-in for now....
-Bug