Victory! (And a Few Minor Defeats)

Well, it has been a while since I blogged at you. I have been busy……busy kicking Veneno’s butt. Yes, she is only getting waffles here. She is whining in her latest post about how I sucked out on her. The fact is that I was on the mat earlier in that session and she let me back in.

In the final hand, I held AK and she held 77. Half of my chips are in the pot when the flop comes J5J. She goes all in, I call. The river is a king. Game, Set. Match. I figured she may be bluffing, but most likely she has a pocket pair or a 5. Given that I only need the one game to win the match and she needs two, I think it is a call. Let’s take a back-of-the-envelope look at the EV:

I call:
28% + 10% chance she is bluffing = 38% chance to win the match right then and there.

I fold:
I am a 2-1 underdog by the chip count. That makes me about 33% to win the match in that session.

I can afford to lose that game, as I would still have another shot at it. Call seems to be the correct play. So, I think more baking, photographing, shipping, and image hosting and less whining would be in order. Boo-yah!

The bad news is that I seem to have totally lost my focus. I have stopped tracking my sessions on my spreadsheet (although, my Poker Tracker stats are still in order.) I have stopped going back and analyzing the best and worst of my play after each session. And, I have stopped forward progress on my reading list.

This all started about a week ago. I had a couple of really bad beats. I should have just walked away. Instead I played harder. In the end, I made back all the losses from a really bad session. But that isn’t the bad part. I kept playing and playing. The cycle of wins and losses repeated several times. Finally, this morning, I realized that I had been sucked into a swirling vortex.

To put it simply, I had, in the last week, become outcome oriented, instead of process oriented. That seems to be the worst thing I could be doing. The whole point of this exercise is to have a process, use the process, and use the feedback I from the process to improve the process.

Where do I go from here?

• I need to forgive myself for screwing up.
• I need to resume tracking all of my sessions in my spread sheet.
• I need to estimate my time and win/loss for the sessions I missed.
• I need to set aside some time to catch up on my reading.
• I need to get back into the habit of reviewing the best and worst of each session, immediately after the session.
• I need to celebrate kicking Veneno’s butt.

I am going to be in AC (and probably NYC) tomorrow through Friday. I plan to bring my laptop and blog after each session.

Cheers.