I've never played 4 straight hours online before. I learned that I had reached 4 straight hours because my free modem dial-up service (through the University) kicks you off after you've been logged on for four hours!
But last night was a world of bad beats and big hands getting cracked.
(Several bad beats follow. Skip to the end if you want to avoid the gory details.)
About my third hand of the night, I get KQ and limp in. Flop is QQx. I check, guy behind me bets $2, folds to me, I raise to $5, he folds. OK, he likes to try to steal paired flops.
One round later, I flop trips again, this time with KT on a TTx board. Exact same thing: I check, he bets $2, I raise to $5, but this time he thinks and calls. I think, aha, he thinks I was bluffing last time and he's not going to have any of that. Turn J, I bet half pot, he calls. Hmm. River blank, I bet, he pushes what's left of his medium stack, I think and call and he has JT.
A little later on another table, I catch sets with my pairs three straight times. Twice I bet them strong and get called to the river where a flush comes to beat me. The third time everybody folds the flop. Total: 3 sets, -$40.
At this point the night turns from tragedy to farce. I catch yet another set, 44 on a J42 board. I check this time since no scary draws, a short stack bets the pot, folds to me, I put the short stack in, he calls. Just a $25 pot. He flips over JT. Turn is a J. River is another J. I can feel it coming as soon as the first jack flips that I'm dead. I start laughing. I figure he had 5 outs on the flop and 4 on the turn, so that's about 1 chance in 9 of having 4 outs: 4/9ths of an out!! Less than a 1% chance of losing it. But having it come J J for quads is just the poker gods asking me to laugh with them instead of crying or tilting about it. So I do. I start laughing out loud while I sit there.
About two minutes later I get AA on a different table and say screw this, I'm raising big right now. Get one caller, the biggest donk at the table. Flop is Q93, I bet most of the pot, he raises big. I push, he calls and shows QT and of course the turn is a T and the pot slides his way. But I'm still in a good mood, I'm laughing. No problem.
A while later my disconnect happens. I have just preflop raised my QQ on one table. On the other table, I am heads up in the blind against a single limper. The board is JT9 and I have Q8 for the flopped straight and my opponent has just overbet the pot. My modem disconnects AT THIS MOMENT. I yell at it and wait for it to reconnect. When it does, I check to find out what happened. Answer: the software called me all-in on both hands, and I lost them both!! The JT9 board he had JT and caught a J on the river. The QQ hand I was called by AT who caught an A on the flop. So my disconnecting saved me a bunch of money. But the poker gods have made it clear they're not through pulverizing my good hands. I like to think they're taking a little pity on me: I'm still losing, but at least they had the decency to disconnect me so I didn't lose any more money postflop.
After the disconnect:
QQ loses to 88, all-in preflop, he catches a flush.
QQ loses to 77: an A flops so I play it cautious and he calls down and catches his 7 on the river.
(End of bad beats)
The point is, the whole way, I was laughing, not tilting. It was fine. I was getting my money in with the best of it, constantly. Occasionally my hands did hold up. My opponents were donks.
At the end of the night, I check my money and I have dropped about $90. But the bonuses cleared paid me $90. So after all that, my bankroll is the same size it was when I started.
This is not just a bad beat rant. In fact, it's not a rant at all because I'm happy about last night. I learned a lot.
I learned:
(1) Laughing at bad beats is a GREAT way to avoid tilt. It helps if the bad beats get truly ludicrous.
Being in a good mood in general helps me play better. It really does. If I'm cranky or worried about work or anything like that, I play much worse. I am sure that if I were in a bad mood going into last night, I would have tilted away a lot of money (or had to quit some pretty juicy games).
(2) Clearing bonuses makes it very easy to feel mellow about losing when the cards don't go your way!! Bonuses can be a great bankroll management tool: not only for the money, but for the way they can help keep you off of tilt.
So here's my new set of thoughts for playing poker.
"Kent, you are a lucky man. You get to sit in the comfort of your own home playing a fun game and make money at it. You know that you are better than most of the people at the table. On top of that, you are clearing bonuses. Over the long term, you will win. BE HAPPY and ENJOY YOURSELF, because it's a wonderful thing to have in your life. When the cards don't go your way, don't be angry. Just laugh and enjoy the moment."
I haven't read "The Tao of Poker" but I think I'm starting to get it anyway.
