Biggest Leak

It's called a leak because it causes you to lose money slowly and consistently. Even though I generally play a tight game I sometime fall into the trap of cold calling in relatively early position with a couple of pretty looking cards. The problem isn't calling with these cards, it's calling without a good certainty that we'll actually get to see a flop for the current bet amount. In this hand we do get the see the flop and we wisely fold to a cbet. Yes, I really had to look hard through today's 200 hands to find a real mistake and that's a great thing.



Incidentally in 200 hands today I had 32 hands where I won money and I went to showdown (SD) exactly ZERO times in hands that I won and only went to SD 3 times overall (all losers). +16ptbb/100 overall today.

Tilt Can Be Expensive

Ok, only managed to get in 101 hands tonight before Full Tilt locked up on me while I was looking at AA on 1 of my tables. Totally sick feeling seeing the player UTG open for 4x the bb when you have AA in the cutoff and then everything freezes. By the time it came back my hand was mucked. I just closed Tilt and posted a huge post on Cardchat about SPR. Sick.

Today's dumbest play is basically a tilt shove with AK postflop against 2 opponents (both rather short).



dlcplayer makes the call with his nut flush draw and catches a 4 for the win but I should have just folded to Zapote's donk bet. This hand was right after my flopped set of Aces was cracked by K3 making a straight, so I was a little tilted. I would have been much better off to just fold AK preflop than make a mistake like this.

Big Bets Usually Mean Big Hands

Another good session tonight. Ended up over +$64 in just over 400 hands (30+ptbb/100). So it must be hard to find something dumb since we won right? I wish!



This hand was destined for doom from the start. While limp calling with J9os is pretty bad the stacks are deep and if we hit big we could really get paid off. The key word in that last sentence is BIG. TPNK is not BIG and when lawmachine bets pot into 4 remaining players we NEED to drop TP quicker than Tyson dropped Spinks. At least I was no so dumb as to call his 3bet all-in! $16.20 thrown away.

Goodbye to a Special Lady.

Just a brief goodbye to my wife's grandmother. She passed away last night (the reason my session was cut short). I lived with her and her late husband for several years while I was finishing college and she was always very kind and caring to me. While her death was not unexpected, she will be missed.

Sometimes "Dumb" Gets Rewarded

Good (+$32) but short (127 hands) day today. This hand was actually my biggest single gain but it was also my worst play. I have no business in this hand after the shorty 3bets and gets flatted by richyrich. I know the shorty's range is AQs+ and both he and richyrich have me crushed, but I call preflop anyway. After the mistake preflop I think I played the rest of the hand fine, but calling 3bets against these ranges with stacks this short will cost me more in the long run than I'll ever make the times I do connect big. Also note that richyrich gave me good odds to chase after the turn.

Getting Crazy on the River

Ok tonight session wasn't very good (down ~ $8 in 200 hands) so I have several candidates for today's post. The hand I selected illustrates how we need to learn when to let a hand go and give up on a bluff.



The real questions about this hand are what the hell are we doing in it after the flop and why didn't our opponent raise on the river. My plan was to call the flop and rep the Q by betting the turn but I really should have given this one up when my turn bet was called. Betting $4 on the river here is just plain stupid and represents 1/2 of our total loses for this session! As to why our opponent didn't raise our river bet; the only thing I can figure is that he thought we had the case Ace for a split pot and didn't want to pay max rake by getting all in. Only thing that really make sense. But remember you should always raise on the river with the 2nd nut. Any Queen will likely call you, but 3 5 will likely fold!

1st Post

So yesterday on CardChat, I read a post from IceMonkey9 ranking the blogs of CC members and I think, hmmm….maybe I should start my own blog but what would I write about that the other members weren’t covering (likely much better than I ever could). Since I drew a total blank I just forgot about it. Then today I read a post by FPaulsson asking people to share their worst mistakes and I though hell I’ve made enough bad plays to fill a book … or a blog! And so The Dumbest Thing I Did Today was born. My hope is that you’ll share my mistakes and then be better prepared to avoid doing the same stupid things yourself.

Some mistakes may be small and some will surely be huge but they will all be MY OWN DAMN FAULT. No bad beats. No big draws that just didn’t make it. Just stupid, stupid plays. Occasionally I’ll post a hand that I sucked out on and won but the play that got me there will have been totally wrong.

Before we get to our 1^st Dumb Thing I Did Toady (DTIDT) let me take a minute to tell you a little bit about my game. I started playing online just about 1 year ago. I’ve turned my initial $50 deposit (Bodog) into over $1000 today. I mainly play NL25 on Full Tilt these days and my bankroll there is just over $500. I use Poker Tracker 3 to keep tabs on my game (and those of my opponents) and it puts me at 6.3 PTBB/100 or about $3.15 for every 100 hands I play. So I am a winning player but I still make some of the dumbest plays you’ll ever see. And, although it’s from February, here is the 1^st one I’d like to share with you.

What we have here is the classic case of overplaying AK (after we missed and failed to make a cbet) against a calling station. I’d played with our villain here enough to know that he wouldn't fold any pair but instead of waiting for a real hand to take his stack I decided to “push him off” his hand and give him mine. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. It’s these major mistakes that negatively affect our overall win rate the most.