1:00pm: On the way to the casino the other night, I told myself I was going to have to put in a 24 hour session. I had committed myself to playing Friday and Saturday, but I knew I couldn’t do both if I wanted to watch the Kimbo Slice/James Thompson fight on CBS last night. Therefore, I decided to just put wrap both sessions all in one, and just stay there all night and into the next day. Let’s call session 1 from Friday 5pm-Saturday 5am. Session 2 was Saturday 5am-Saturday 5pm.
- First Session: I was extremely card dead. After 8 hours of play, I had still not picked up AA, KK, QQ, or JJ a single time. My opponents were weak, although unbluffable, so I was going to need cards because almost every hand went to a showdown. For the duration of this 8 hour session, it consisted pretty much of losing money gradually, and then winning a pot which seemed to “refuel” the money that I had lost. At about 3am, right before we combined tables and just before the game I had been playing in all night broke, I made a bad call and lost $400 on the hand. I had AQoff with top pair, and ran into a set of 4s and paid the guy off when I shouldn’t have — and that’s not just in hind sight. I knew the player, and should have known better. After that hand happened, the game broke and we were transferred to another table. In a nutshell, for the first session: the most I was up was $200, and the most I was down was $750. I finished the session down $650.
- Second Session: Was a little bit more memorable simply because of this character I played with for the whole duration of the session. After the 10-25 NL game broke, the guy was clearly bored and looking for some action so he decided to give 2-5 NL a try. Naturally, I was on the lookout for this guy because I wasn’t sure if he was skilled or wealthy. It should also be noted that the guy won a good bit of money in the 10-25 NL game. Anyways, the guy starts out with $1,000 on the table — for some reason he got to break the “half the biggest stack buy in rule”, which I never have a problem with because I always think more money on the table is a good thing. Anyways, the guy is a textbook LAG skilled player. What’s more is that he also did a lot of talking. Think of him as a more skilled Jamie Gold, for the sake of reference. Anyways, I remained card dead throughout the morning, but I finally picked up KK under the gun at about 8am, and I decided to limp-reraise because it was a heavy action table. The LAG notable player made it $25 to go (as he did every single hand, without fail), and I made it $125 to go because the guy did not fold, ever. Everyone else folded to him, and he of course calls. His range was so wide, that I couldn’t put him on a specific hand, however I knew it was typically something like 89 suited, J10 suited, or anything “cute and playable”, so I knew I was going to have to pay to let him draw, if there was a draw on the board. This was going to be a bit of a challenge for me, so I pretty much warped myself into the “heads up screen” on PokerStars while I was in the hand. For this hand, the chips were tournament chips and not cash, and I could not under any circumstances, allow myself to get outplayed here. Anyways, the flop was: 3c 5c 10s. I checked, because I knew the guy would bet if I checked. He bets $200. The hand became suprrisingly simple at that point. The man put me to a decision for all my chips. If I was going to play the hand, I needed to decide if I was beat right here, right now at this point. I couldn’t just call $200 — I either needed to believe him and fold, or completely push all in and put the decision on him. I decide to do the latter, and he of course folds within 3 seconds. The rest of the session went pretty well, with the exception of the last hand I played. I got caught up with KhJh on a Jack high board with someone who held KK, and gave away $300 on the hand. I was up $500 on the session, but that one hand reduced my profit to $200.
To sum up, it was a long day and truth be told I was happy just to get out of there. I finished the whole session down $450. Although the poker room was non smoking, I still reaked of smoke because smoking was allowed in the rest of the casino.
As for the session being a losing one, that didn’t concern me because I know what my live session statistics look like long term. In case you’re curious, I win 76% of my sessions, for an hourly wage of $44.10, and is based on a 3 year sample size.
That being said, I look forward to putting in a winning heads up session tonight, as the 7-7 session the other night, and the - session at Harrah’s this weekend have left a rather stale taste in my mouth.
More later…
Start a Clean Slate at a New Room, a New Sharkscope, and Keep HFL Free in the Process
