Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Thin value bets

I went up to Red Rock with my wife last night and played 1/2 NL.  I think overall I played really well, made some decent thin value bets, and overall I'm pretty happy with my play.

Here are some hands that went down last night.

Limp with J-9 offsuit after some others limped.  Flop comes out 9-8-4.  Guy to my right bets 15 (about a pot sized bet).  I raised to 30.  I actually meant to make it 35 but messed up.  He called.  Turn came a queen.  He checked.  I bet 22, he called.  River is a jack, giving me 2 pair but putting the 1 card straight out there.  He checked again.  I bet 30.  He called.  He had Q-8.  :P

I thought I played that hand fine, and I thought my bets were pretty good.  Flop raise, fine, although I could have made it more.  I wanted to isolate and didn't want to get in too much trouble by putting too big of a raise in.  On the turn I was more than willing to fold to a raise, like if he had J-T, but he didn't raise.  On the end I make 2 pair.  I was planning on checking behind if I didn't improve, but since I made 2 pair I thought it was reasonable to put another small bet out there and get value from something like A-8, A-9, whatever.  Of course, he turned 2 pair and I hit the only 3 outer I had to lose additional money.

Hand 2 : Guy raises to 7 in early position.  I call with 2 red queens.  We see the flop 5 handed.  Flop is A-8-5.  It checks around.  Turn is a blank.  Checks to me, I bet 9, get 2 callers.  River is another 5.  Checks to me, I bet 16, get 1 caller.  Queens are good.  I was pretty happy with this one.  Pretty much every other person playing 1/2 there would just check it down I'm sure, and certainly would shut down after getting called on the turn.  So I got a little extra value there.

Hand 3 : I raise to 7 with K-K, get 3 callers.  Flop is J-10-3.  I bet 21, get 1 caller.  Turn is a queen, giving me the straight draw.  I'm out of position and don't love it, but I still want to get value where I can so I bet 30.  I'm going to fold to any raise.  Girl calls me again.  River is a 5.  I bet 35, she calls.  I turn up my K-K expecting it's good, she turns up a set of 3s.  :P

Then just a couple annoying hands.  I have 9-9 in the blind and raise it 7 more after a bunch of people limp.  Flop comes 10-7-x.  I bet out 20.  This lady down the table raises me 20 more.  I fold.  She is all like "I just wanted to see where you were at".  LOL, give me a break.  Preflop she was also saying something like I was raising a lot, and do I really have it every time, etc.  Which made me want to call more on the flop.  At that point, I thought she might be raising me somewhat light but I just figured I'd let her have this one and if she kept doing it, I'd be more willing to keep her honest later.  However as the night progressed I think that was literally the only pot she played.  So I was pretty happy with myself, not getting sucked into her obvious BS talk.  Preflop she probably even had me beat, who knows.  I'm really really happy I didn't put an extra dime in on that pot.

Then the always annoying hand where I'm in the big blind with J-J and make it 11, early position limper girl (previously had the set of 3s) now raises it to 32 and just so obviously has a super strong hand.  She's like "I have to raise" and double-checks her cards before putting the raise out.  I know she has me beat, and she only has like $160 more.  I'm getting 2:1 on my call, and she has about 8 times the size of the raise in her stack, but I know I'm going to have to hit a set to win so I just fold.  I figure it's a good play especially since I'm not going to know if she has A-A or K-K or whatever (maybe Q-Q?) so it's going to be hard to play even if I do hit a set.  I'll just blindly stack off if she flopped set over set.  So I fold and she shows me A-A.  

Basically just another super annoying night of poker.  I'm losing a ton lately and it's extremely frustrating.  I think I played really well yesterday.  I made some great value bets in my opinion, although if anyone reading this thinks otherwise feel free to post.  The J-9 and K-K hands were just sort of unlucky I think, I feel like I could have gotten called by a bunch of weaker hands there and my bets were good.  Then the other hands were just annoying to lose.

I ended up losing about $190 over 2.3 hours.  I'm trying to stay positive and play my best.  I think I played really well yesterday so that is a good feeling, but losing doesn't feel good.  I'm on about a $1700 downswing right now and it feels shitty.  It's crazy too, a lot of that has been playing 1/2.  Some of it has been bad play, but I haven't been getting much luck either I think. 

Going to play again tonight, but I'm definitely feeling beat down after these losses.  Staying positive!  :-)  I know I can turn it around and I'm playing fine, especially when I'm really concentrating and focusing on playing my best.

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