Heart

Poker has been a lot rougher this month than February. I was lucky enough to end the entire month without a single losing session and an unsustainable hourly.

March has been quite the opposite. I've put in five sessions and winning only two. Luckily the wins and losses offset so I'm breaking even so far this month. Every session I've played except for the one at the Bike feels like a roller coaster. Many times I go down quickly to start the session and end up spending hours recovering. Uphill battles are no fun. Winning when you're up feels natural, winning back what you lost takes will.

I haven't written about poker in a while but today was a special case because I wanted to document just how good the 10/20 game was at Palomar. I think there was a period of time where every orbit there would be 2-3 pots over 3k. The way the game was playing you had to be ready to gamble at any point. One of the players was really pumping up the action and he was not folding. Ever. I've played with him before in Vegas and he is great action because when you make a hand, as long as you size your bets correctly, you will either double up or come very close.

Unfortunately for me I started off fast then went down quick when I made a speculative call against the action player. In a nutshell, ~3100 effective starting stacks, I 3-bet my opponent OOP with AQ. Flop K 8 2 r and I bet 260. My opponent raises to 560 and I call. Turn 9h putting two hearts on board. I c/c 650. River 7. I c/c 1700 which put me all-in. I think against a random hand it wasn't close (needed ~35% equity, was getting almost 3:1, had to call 1700 to win 6340).

However, thinking about the hand a lot after, I don't believe my opponents hand was truly random. Given all the action, I think I can eliminate Kx and 8x type hands because I don't believe my opponent is raising these hands on the flop. I think his raise on the flop only makes sense with two pair+ type hands or air. But because the board is so dry, I actually think his raise on the flop is weighted almost entirely towards air, which makes my AQ a huge favorite.

The area of this hand that really requires attention is the river. Since the board did not pair and no flush is possible, we have to carefully eliminate hands that were bluffing but have caught up. My opponent most likely puts me on QQ/JJ/TT given action to the river so his shove is designed to make me fold these hands. However, hands like A9 A7 Q9 JT J9 J7 57 56 T9 T7 have all made pairs or better. My hand now only beats a small part of my opponents bluffing range. That range consisting of worse Ax hands QJ and QT.

At the time, it didn't make sense to me to call the turn and muck the river. But when I think about the hand now, it's perfectly find to call turn and fold river because the river changes a lot of bluffing hands into made hands that my opponent still believes he is "bluffing" with since he is trying to make me muck a pair lower than kings (which is never happening but my opponent doesn't know that).

I feel like there is a lot more I can dissect about this hand but I'm pretty tired. I'm pretty sure if I came up with an extensive hand range and ran it through stove, my equity would be <15% which would make my call a mistake. For those who are dying to know the results, my opponent showed J7 for the winning hand. I spent the rest of the afternoon battling back and booking a small win so the session didn't end as bad as it could have.