Poker Perambulation

We’ve talked about M in a couple of posts. This post will be fairly short and sweet; as short and unsweet as that lousy stack in front of you.

So, you got that horrible suckout or misread things or just were asleep at the switch when you shouldn’t have been. Happens to everyone.

Now, you’ve got a lousy M and the blind is approaching and you look down at 75s. Yuck! But, it is two live cards you figure and push it all in using an early position bluff to try to indicate a hand. The AJ calls and and you miss completely””never mind if he hit; that isn’t important–so you make that long walk.

Congratulation! You played it like a pro. Sure it sucks but you got your two live cards. They just left you hanging. It is nice to pick up AA when you get in that shape; but, the Card Fairy is a fey creature.

“Fey,” has historically meant “doomed to die,” mostly in Scotland, which tied in with the original meaning of fate. It has now gained the meaning “touched by otherworldly or magical quality; clairvoyant, supernatural. –Wikipedia

The thing about poker is we are always second guessing ourselves. Second guess yourself regularly and you’ll make bigger mistakes. Everybody throws a hand history out there and ask their question:

• How could I have gotten more out of the pot. (The unhappy winner syndrome)

• Didn’t I bet enough on the turn? (The suckout tale)

• How could he call me? (The busted bluffer’s lament)

• Where do these people come from? (I’m an ingrate and broke to boot)

Guess what? Everyday isn’t peaches and cream–even if your name is Doyle Brunson. Look at this hand history from Cardplayer for the HORSE biggy at this year’s World Series of Poker:

David Singer raised to $60K from the cut-off seat and Jim Bechtel made the call from the small blind. Doyle made the call from the BB, leaving him with only 8,000. The flop came Q-8-2. They checked to Singer, who bet $150K, Bechtel raised to $500K, and Doyle called all-in with a J-6 offsuit. Singer folded. Bechtel turned over A-Q.

So how could he call? He needed runner-runner. He did have a very remote chance to triple up. Sometimes that is all that life gives us. The good guys always win in the movies. This ain’t the movies.

Play your cards. Take your chances. And walk out with your head high when it comes a crashing. And just maybe some online monkey will make the wrong entry in his notes and call you a fish and pay you off down the road.

Addendum:

If you are thinking about buying a new computer about now and don’t think you’ll be able to live without the new MS Vista operating system, you need to hold off. One of the specifications is to make the hard drive ‘closer’ to the processor. In layman’s terms that means MS is going to pound your hard drive like never before. The solution planned is to place a big chunk of faster flash memory between the processor and the drive as a cache. There are no motherboards out their with this feature to date. And there is are questions about the efficiency of even the current state-of-the-art video controllers being up to the Vista task. XP isn’t going to quit working the day Vista arrives. In fact it will be far more bug free””that is a given. So throw a bit more memory in that clunker and relax a bit.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 20th, 2006 at 5:52 am and is filed under Journal, Poker Philosophy, Tournaments. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.