Session Notes — Part III

A few weeks ago, I started writing about some hands from a session of $5-$5 no-limit hold’em with a $300-$1,500 buy-in. Unless otherwise stated, assume that the stacks are more than $1,000. I’ve been going over the hands from this session so I have a better understanding of my current poor run. I think it’s important all of the time, especially when you are running well or poorly, to look back at notes from your session to check in on how you’re playing to confirm or refute “running bad.” Here is another hand from that session:

Hand 1:

The player three off the button makes it $20. The hijack calls, I call in the cutoff with J 10, everyone else folds. The flop is A 2 4. Both players check to me, I bet $40, only the hijack calls. The turn is the 3. He checks and calls $90. The river is the 7 and we both check. He has 8-5 with no club.

I didn’t make a note on whom my opponent was in this hand, but it’s definitely an interesting hand nonetheless. I feel like the flop bet is pretty standard and one I’ll pretty much always make. Both opponents checked to me on an ace-high dry flop and one of my opponents was the preflop aggressor. He most likely has a mid to high pocket pair or Broadway cards and is hoping to get a free look at the turn card. I get folds from the preflop raiser a very large percentage of the time, and the third player in the pot folds almost as often. It didn’t work out quite as well as planned until the turn came.

I’ve now made my flush and am in a bit of a game theory quandary. Usually, I’d check back this turn with almost every hand in my range. It allows me to get a second street of value on the river when I have value hands and they have a middle strength hand and also allows me to bluff-catch when they lead the river and I have an ace. Additionally, if they have a hand they’re willing to fold, I can bluff them on the river as well. However, I have a flush and I can play exploitively against someone who has a five or a smaller flush. From the notes I have on this hand, I’m presuming my opponent was someone who was willing to give me plenty of action and I should take advantage of that with my value hands.

The river was an unfortunate one for me. I’m not particularly scared of higher flushes since he didn’t lead into me, but there probably aren’t too many hands my opponent will call me with that I beat. I have the jack and ten of clubs, so he’d have to be calling with any club for a decent-sized bet to be profitable. However, something I didn’t consider in the play of this hand, perhaps because I’ve been in a poor mental state because of “running bad,” was the option to bet small. I could have bet $50 into the $320 pot and my opponent would almost certainly have called with any flush and perhaps a straight as well, thinking that I was betting two pair or a set for value still. My immediate thought when the river hit was, “That sucks, my runouts have been terrible lately even when I have the winning hand” instead of a healthier, “That’s a poor card for my hand, but will he call a small bet still with worse?”

I found myself in a situation where I could make money even with a poor runout and, instead of finding that value in the hand, I took pity on myself and left it on the table. This is the less obvious and probably more insidious part of going through a bad stretch when playing. You find yourself questioning your play when it’s good and turned out poorly, and you also find yourself making poor decisions because your immediate thought upon a certain river card or a turn/river combo is, “Not this again.” I’m usually pretty good about avoiding this type of thought process, but I can vividly remember thinking this and checking behind in a frustrated manner. I didn’t catch it at the time as a missed value-bet. Instead, I thought of it as another bad river card in a string of bad river cards. What I should have done after this hand was over was go for a walk around the building to clear my head and get my thought process back on point. Instead. I continued playing and, just a few hands later, lost my biggest pot of the night that I might have been able to get away from had I been in a better frame of mind. We’ll talk about that hand in the next installment of the notes on this session. ♠

Gavin Griffin was the first poker player to capture a World Series of Poker, European Poker Tour and World Poker Tour title and has amassed nearly $5 million in lifetime tournament winnings. Griffin is sponsored by HeroPoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @NHGG