Day Five: Back There Again

4 hours. +$950.

If you play well and get good cards, sometimes things like this will happen.

Looking back over the past week of posts, focus appears to be the – well, focus of my efforts. The same is true today.

Nearly every time I sit down, I know more about how to play poker than all of the other eight players. I say that with complete confidence, and also without any pride.

Because how much I know and how much I’ve studied means absolutely nothing when my less educated opponents play better than me. And that happens a lot.

Today my level of focus was high, but inconsistent. I continue to learn how much information can be gained from the play of a hand, even if it doesn’t go to showdown. I also continue to phase out for a lot of hands and parts of hands. The amount of information available to me that I let go by unobserved is astonishing.

A good run of cards, and a lots of really poor play by my opponents combined to make this a great day. My opponents were destroyed mostly by a willingness to play big pots when they shouldn’t and very wide pre-flop ranges.

As always, I had trouble focusing, which limited the amount of information I had to work with. But within that limitation, I made extremely few errors. My bluffs that were called were absolutely correct, given the situation and the information I had. The bluffs that I folded to (quite a few, in fact) were all correct folds given the situation. I knew when to value bet AT or AJ, when to fold AQ, and when to check to induce a bluff.

I only know of one expensive mistake, when I misplayed a flopped straight with T8o. That probably cost me $150.

All in all, I played better than usual, against opponents who were worse than usual, and got cards that were better than usual. So a $950 upswing is not unreasonable.

I’m looking to play better than this on a regular basis, and if I can, against the same caliber players. That should generate a nice change in my results.