Thursday, April 28, 2005

Chasing Bad Money with Worse Money

After a quick sit down, suck out, and run I added a UB player to my buddy list. I am at work and do not have the hand history but it went something like this:
STeelerJosh - AQo
Punk Player - Q30

Flop, Rainbow, Q high

I made a large preflop raise from LP (1 off button I think) it was called by 2 players.

Small bet to me, I raise big with TPTK, wanting to take it down right now on the flop, Punk calls and I estimated him to be pot committed at this point
Turn is a 3. Punk goes all in for last $1.50 and I call. River no help and He takes ~ $6 off of me. I had been way up for the session in .05/.10 so I was still up but a little perturbed that he called and left the table right after the win. He played 2-3 hands including this one.

As soon as I added him, UBuddy chimed, he sat down at a 10+1 10 player SNG. I sat down also (in position so that I am button when he is in BB) I chuckle to myself, and think this should be fun. He plays pretty aggressively here and is getting pretty lucky. After losing a big hand to the guy between me and the Punk I get AA and make a big bet, the guy between us must suspect tilt because he just took a big one off of me and goes over the top all-in. Easy call. Aces hold up and he is down to a couple hundred chips, I am chip leader. Few hands later, he is out. Pretty soon the Punk gets involved in some big hands and comes out smelling like roses. He takes chip lead. I am in 2nd with 6 people left and I am playing very, very tight, I want to get into the money and I want to trap this guy. It was not to be. Despite only playing premium hands and betting them big, I took a big hit on a hand that was all in preflop my KK against KQs. He caught two Queens and I was hurting. All of a sudden, the cards started coming.

QQ - Pot sized Bet (blinds are 150/300 at this point so that was most of my stack, 500) Everyone folds
very next hand....
QQ again!! Sweet!. Pot is raised once by a very, very tight player (he played maybe 5 hands to this point) so I cannot rule out AA or KK, but I am short stacked still and might not see hole cards this nice again so I push. He calls and flips over AA. I am out and the punk probably made the money while I lost the $11 plus the $6 he took from me leaving me down overall for the night.

Lessons? I think I should continue to play my game and not let ego or aggressiveness get me out of my grinding mindset at the nickel dime NL tables. If I had won the SNG (which I have not done on UB yet, 0-3) I would be tempted to do that in the future, but with a loss I can think of that next time I am tempted to chase someone. Hit and Runs will be a part of the stuff that goes on in online poker, I just need to accept it and know that it will happen again, and probably again and again. There are more important parts of my game that I need to work on.

This leads me to my last question. The answer may very well be "It Depends" (like in all my business classes in college) but if you use Poker Tracker software how does it rate you and what is your ideal rating? I currently bounce between Loose Aggressive Passive and Loose Aggressive Aggressive. Loose because I $VP (voluntarily put money in pot) 25%-33% of the time and aggressive because I PreFlop raise a lot. The second Aggressive/Passive I bounce between is the Post Flop play. Since I am playing a lot of pots, I often fold when I don't make my hand instead of pushing with absolute crap. I feel comfortable folding so I don't worry about the second indicator too much. One major shortcoming of my style so far is that I can be trapped and will push with TPTK on the flop. When people call and make their hand, I pay. When they don't, they pay but sometimes fold. I am not sure if this is the best type of play for the lower limit tables.

My reasoning is this. I feel comfortable laying down a good hand when I am pretty confident it is beaten. It is hard for opponents to put me on a certain class of hands. If I play what I have correctly, I should be winning. When my suited connectors bust premium cards, emotions can affect their play. The risk I have the most trouble with is getting trapped. I also wonder what my table image is.

Any thoughts you have about this are appreciated, I will try and post my statistics for the game that I am concentrating on right now, .05/.10 NL on UB.

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