I was taking a poker break when I read this post.

forum/viewtopic.php?t=18239

You can see by my comments that I think my biggest leak is my emotional attatchment to the game (and my money). By that, I dont mean I fold because Im afraid to lose money, I mean I get pissed when I lose. It doesnt make me tilt very often although it does happen, but it does put me on life tilt. It affects my mood when Im done.

So after reading this post, I made it my number one priority to keep score not by my win rate or how much money Ive won, but my the number and magnitude of mistakes. My goal is this: if I play a mistake free session and lose a buy in, Im going to try to train myself to act like I won money instead of losing money. This is easy to say, but not so easy to do when you are as competitive as I am. Its easy to say, I played well, i feel good. But do you really feel good? Or does it eat at you for a while when you lost 2-3 buy ins? Up to now it has bothered me more than it should.

So Ive come back from a short break. Ive played 1500 hands of $2/$4 NL. Ive made what I think is 1 mistake so Im very happy. Im winning also, so its been easy so far, but during the sessions that I was losing most of the time, I still felt fine so I hope this works for me.

Here are 2 hands were I may have made a mistake on the river. Did I? And if so, rate the mistake from 1-10.


#1) Decent player open raises to $14 UTG. I call with 77.

Pot $34. Flop [7h][9s]. He checks. I bet $24. He calls.
Pot $82. Turn . He checks, and I check behind.
Pot $82. River . He leads $74.

#2) 2 limpers and I have [5h] in the BB

Pot $14. Flop [5d][4h]. Checked around.

Pot $14. Turn . I bet $12. 1 fold , then button raises to $36. I call.

Pot $86. River . I check, he bets $86.

I called one of these and folded the other (although I saw the cards in both hands so I know if the fold was wrong or not). Rate my river mistakes if there is one (or 2)

Fold #1, Call #2.

The preflop raiser in hand #1 was UTG and is fairly soild preflop. Hes going to have AK / AQ / big pair type hand. $24 into a $34 pot is plenty. If he had [Kh] or something like that he wouldnt have checked to me.

#2) Theres only 2 limpers. Im not sure why it matters where the other limper was because he folded already. I did mention that villain limped from the button.