Welcome Back to The Game

I got to go play last night down at the Muck in the $30/60 game and it felt good to be back. This has been a pretty light month for poker, in fact looking at my records I only got in four session this whole month, the lightest of the year so far. The session started out weak, I lost a few big hands right off the bat to get stuck about $600 but then I just went on a roll. I actually ran well, really well for about 3 hours in the middle of my session. I was playing well, reading pretty well, and my timing was good too. I was staying away from trouble hands, and laying down losers quickly. My patience was good, which was surprising given I have not played much. There were not any huge exciting wins, just lots of average pots that added up over the night. It is so much easier to play when you develop a good table image. People stay out of your way, they don't draw at you and chase, and you can bluff at pots and people will lay down. Then when they do chase they do not hit. Those extra bluff bets really add up over the course of a long session. I would say I made an extra $800 just from table image and bluffs last night. Funny how that works, winning breads more winning and easier wins.

The game was good, not any wild gamblers, but good nonetheless. It also helped that the usual best player at the table was running horrible and I was seated just to his left so I got to isolate him on a lot of raises and then either outfloped him on a number of occasions or just won the coin flip hands like 99's vs A,Q. I just punished him most of the night. Like I said I have not had a run like that in like 6 months maybe longer. Felt AWESOME. I ended up with a 52 Big Bet night, best BB session of the year. Not the biggest win, but biggest bets for one session. I actually called it a bit early as I cooled off around 11:00pm and could not get any hands to play, or hold on to the A,K or A,Q hands. I lost back around $600 and quit up $3169. Hope to play again this weekend. I will also have my pictures back from Alaska today so I will post them on Thursday or Friday.

You might have noticed that I have stopped talking about Aaron as well. He has pretty much burned out on poker right now. I hope he can find the love of the game again, but I don't think that will happen any time soon. Too bad as he is a great player going through a tough patch right now. He just does not want to even look at cards right now. Maybe I can get him thinking about it in a few months, but right now he is not going to play. His motivation is money right now and not the game. When you get to that point it just is not even fun. I have never played this game for the money. This is evident because I can go play $8/16 and $10/20 and even $4/8 on occasion and have fun. It is about the game, being better than the other players at the table, letting out some of those competitive juices, and exercising your brain on math and human psychology. Winning money is good, and I really hate to lose, but I don't really care about the money. The extra pocket money is just fun to have. It will not make a difference in my life, unless of course I won $1,000,000 in some WPT or WSOP tournament. If you play for the money it adds another level of pressure. I don't think I could handel playing for a living, I would not feel comfortable to have to win to eat or pay the rent, plus playing every day would get boring really fast. I love to play but playing 20 straight days would drive me nuts. Aaron just does not understand how I can have fun playing at the lower limit games, if he is not in the biggest game in the room it is not exciting to him, and that game better be bigger the $100/200 or he won't even play. Need to get back to playing for the love. Hope you have a profitable fall. Talk to you soon..SJ