The last couple of evenings, I’ve played some of my first holdem sessions in about a month, maybe more. With a bonus at Empire Poker to work off before the end of saturday, the time felt right for some low limit grinding.

Tuesday evening I felt well and truly like a man who hadn’t played for a while. For some reason I consciously tried to play looser preflop than I used to, and after the flop, I made a very deliberate decision to think hands through more before acting. Preflop, this meant I was playing questionable hands slightly out of position at the full tables, but with several players behind me fairly loose themselves and not too aggressive, it seemed safe to be playing low and medium suited connectors, confident that I could walk away from the hand if I had to, or make the most of it when I hit a flop. At the short-handed tables I was playing, I was more focussed on playing aggressively when the opportunity arose. Fortunately, most low limit short-handed players aren’t quite able to adjust from full tables, or just don’t have the natural short-handed game. I’m not that fearsome an opponent myself, but I find that I frequently feel like I’m in complete control of what happens at the table.

Nonetheless, I made a small, but trivial loss on that first evening. Largely as a result of folding an overpair on a paired board because I was feeling clever and managed to outwit myself by misplaying my hand on pretty much every street. It’s very difficult, sometimes, to get an accurate read on your opponents if you’re not playing your own hand the way they might expect. Looking back, I hadn’t shown much aggression, so although from my perspective it appeared that the betting I was facing must surely indicate a better hand than I had, the people betting into me didn’t feel the same way - I hadn’t really shown the strength of my hand, so they could easily have been betting weaker holdings than I was giving them credit for, and that was the case. I folded JJ, and TT took the pot unimproved.

Yesterday, though, was better. I felt good about my game, and felt able to make decent reads even though I was multitabling again. And even when I was hitting a fairly rought patch, being drawn out on several times in a row by weak opposition, I didn’t let it tilt me. (Well, not too much, only so much that I raised 53o in EP, but that’s a standard play these days anyway, and I did flop K55…) So, not that it matters, but after about 550 hands, I’m about 20BB up, which will do me for now. I just hope I don’t hit a downswing before I really get going again…

Tags: Poker