So I Cheered Up And Things Got Worse!

My dear, late father had a joke he used with me for as long as I can remember.  When things were going bad and I was down in the dumps, he'd say to me:

"Cheer up!  Things could be worse."

Then there would be a pause and he added:

"So he cheered up, and things got worse."

So after my last post, I cheered up, went back to the poker tables and.....things got worse.

Really, they got worse. The same evening I posted my recent tale of woe, things got worse. You can find the last post below, or here.

And be sure to scroll down to read the warning from an Anonymous commenter warning me to stop playing poker, because it was going to get worse.

Ah hell, just as some folks have short attention spans, I know that no matter how much I plead and beg, the vast majority of people out there wouldn’t click a link if I put a gun to their heads.  So here is that comment, so my lazier readers (and you know who you are) won’t have to click the link:

All I know is you ain't seen nuthin yet...2 nights in a row of horrible bad luck...atrocious bad luck..but it's not 2 weeks in a row...it's not 2 months in a row...it's not a solid year of nothing but bad beats...it's actually possible for this bad run of yours to go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on to the point where it not only seems statistically impossible, but almost IS statistically impossible. Could happen! It's happening to me right now. Over and over again my sessions, whether cash games or tourneys always end the same way....the exact way you described those two sessions...OK, not EVERY session, but almost all of them.. it's horrible....get out now while you can!!!!

I only wish I had read and heeded Anony’s prescient warning before going to play some more poker just moments after hitting the “Publish” button and publishing that last post.  Because what I already posted was actually fun compared to this one.

I had donked off my original $200 buy-in and was working my way back.  Ordinarily, I would tell you folks just how badly I played a hand to lose the first buy-in, but I wouldn’t want people with short attentions spans to complain about how long my posts are again. It’s frankly getting tiresome to see some smart-ass blogger complain about it.

And thus I also won’t tell you how I was starting to recover, and had worked my $200 rebuy up to about $300-$320 by playing excellent poker for the next hour or two.  Truth be told, it all seems meaningless now as a result of my last hand of the night anyway.

It wasn’t a particularly wild table.  Pretty sane, really.  One guy, a Brit, had a big stack, about $800-$900, and he was a bit aggressive, and was not afraid of taking risks and of using his big stack to bully a bit, but believe me, I’ve seen a lot more aggro players.  Of course, the time I lost my stack it was to him, when he had played something like 10-4 suited to hit a flush.  So his play on this hand didn’t really surprise me.

I was in late position with Ace-King offsuit.  A new player, an older gentleman, raised to $8.  He hadn’t played a hand until now, after about 10-15 minutes there.  I had to put him a big hand.

Ace-King is not a hand I usually three bet, as I noted in my last post.  Against this guy, until I saw something from him to change my mind, I wasn’t going to three-bet him with A-K. Now if the Brit had made the raise, I would have three-bet for sure.  But he was in the blind and he called the raise like I did, and a few others did.

The flop was merely Queen-Jack-10.  Yeah, I had flopped Broadway, the nuts.  I was pretty happy about that, but I was concerned a bit because two of the cards were clubs, and neither of my cards were clubs.

Brit led out with a $10 bet, Seat 1 and the preflop raiser both called.  Seat 1 had been there all night, and was a totally reasonable player, neither a nit nor an aggro and certainly not a fish.  A solid player.

Of course I wanted to bet to give any draws, particularly the flush draw, bad odds to call.  I thought about shoving, but that seemed like an overbet.  Believe it or not, I don’t think if I had shoved there it would have changed the result one bit.

Instead, I bet $70 because three people had already shown interest in the hand.  Too big?  Too small?  Let me know your thoughts.  I don’t think it mattered in this case, but perhaps it will help in the future if I ever decide to play poker again.

Brit thought about it for awhile, and it really looked like he was going to fold.  But my read was wrong.  Instead, he put out two stacks of red chips and announced “raise.”  A raise to $200 to be exact.  Seeing as how I had the stone-cold nuts at that point, that didn’t dismay me.  But I was absolutely sure he was on a flush draw and I just had to hope he’d miss.

To my surprise, Seat 1 went into the tank and thought long and hard about his action.  He had about $200 in front of him.  What the hell did he have?  He couldn’t have had Ace-King because that’s a snap call.  And if he had a set, he would have raised preflop with any pair that the flop had hit. A flush draw?  Two pair?  My gut told me if he had a flush draw, it was better than the Brit's flush draw, if indeed that is what he had.

Finally, after a long time, he shrugged his shoulders, said OK, and put all his chips over the betting line.

The old guy, the preflop raiser, folded instantly, saying something like, “I started this, but I can’t finish it.”

Back to me, and I wasted no time in saying “all in.”  What else am I supposed to do with the nuts?

Brit asked for counts of both our chips, but there was no way he was folding.  Of course, he called.

Nobody showed their hand and the dealer dealt out the hand.  The pot was over $800.  Both the Brit and I had full claim to all of it; if Seat 1 took it down, there’d still be about $200 plus for one of us.  Of course, all I could think of was, “no clubs, don’t pair the board.”  I didn’t say it out load, but I was shouting it eternally.

The turn card was a low red card, I don’t remember what it was, but it looked great to me.  One bullet dodged.   

The river, on the other hand, was extremely ugly.  It was god-damn f***ing 8 of clubs.  Yeah, a god-damn f***ing 8 of clubs.  I knew I was dead.

Seat 1 showed two high cards for two pair.  I didn’t notice which ones, it didn’t matter.

Of course the Brit had two f***ing clubs in his hand.  Of course he did.  It was a 9 and a 5.  So once again I lost to a pretty low flush.  I mean, I know the guy put me on exactly what I had, but he couldn’t be sure someone else didn’t have two clubs and that one of them was higher than a lousy 9.  But he gambled and won.

You can be sure I did not rebuy after that, I left the table and was done for the night.  If not the year.  If not for life.

The pain was worse because of it coming so soon after the three hands I described last time, another suckout.  Plus it was a huge pot for a 1/2 game.  It would have put me over $400 ahead for the night, instead of leaving stuck that $400.  All my work trying to recover from that one badly played hand just flew right out the window because of a lousy 8 of clubs.

I checked the odds calculator later and was surprised to see that I didn’t have more equity with the flopped nuts.  I was only 48% to win there on the flop.  Brit was 34% and Seat 1 was 18%.  But since the turn missed them, on the river I was 71%, Brit was 19% and Seat 1 was 10%.  Guess I should have found a fold there, huh?

At least I couldn't blame the guy I had blamed in my last post.  You know, the guy I thought was my own personal black cat.  He, his wife, his wife's orange dress, and his wife's possibly non-organic big tits were nowhere to be seen.

I wrote the above immediately after returning to my room after it took place, two nights ago.  I wish I could tell you things got better the next night, but I had another nightmarish poker session.  It wasn't the dreaded pocket kings cracked--it was Aces again.  However, I am not going to blog about it, at least not for now.  It's just too damn depressing.  I'll have to find something more fun to talk about in my next post.  Of course in my current state of mind, I can't think of anything that is fun.

Poker is a stupid game.

A very stupid game.

I hate that stupid game.