Tuesday Feb 6th -- I continued to experiment with NL25, with mixed results. The brief evening session was only slighly profitable (+$10) -- I ran into quite a few bad players, but I also made my share of costly mistakes.

The late night session featured even costlier mistakes -- the fish were there but I totally failed to take advantage; in fact I failed to go with my read and made some costly bonehead plays. I lost a few huge pots, and the net result was -$10, i.e. the entire day was pretty much a wash.

Things that I learned on this day:
1) Don't buy in short; otherwise I will find my excuse to make bonehead preflop plays. On this day I twice pushed JJ and AK preflop for ~half a buy-in, both times into AA (and deservingly lost).

2) Try to control my emotion, even if I feel I have been singled out by an opponent. Every time when I think my opponent was pushing me around and I stood up, my opponent will come up with a monster. In the future I should either stay calm or change table (or both).

3) Fishy players tend to think about their own cards and not their opponents'. I should not be making the same mistake myself.

4) Be familiar with a player before I bluff.

Right now it looks awfully like that I am at the top of the "newbie's circle of death". As least I'm aware of this nasty trend, and I must improve my play to avoid the circle.

Hand reviews. First, the good:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?802608
I wish all poker hands are like this: flopped set in a raised pot against 2 others who both liked the flop -- preflop raiser had TPGK and the other shortie had a straight draw. I boated up when a second King appeared to the turn, shortie paid to draw dead, and preflop raiser also went broke with trip Kings after not improving on the river.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?802610
JT clubs, raised preflop, flopped a monster draw and flushed on the turn where I was check-raised. Bigger flush? No, opponent was only trying to represent it.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?802613
AA vs KK, preflop all-in. Standard stuff.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?802653
As seen here this opponent isn't a tight caller by any means. He called large bets with TP weak kicker all the way to showdown.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?802662
I think opponent was trying to represent an 8, but he didn't know I could beat trips. I was glad he decided to go broke with the pair of Aces that he caught on the turn.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?801104
A successful floating attempt. My check-raise bluff was called, but I spiked my 2 on the turn and went on to destack my opponent who had AA. What should opponent should feel sicker about -- my play, his own play, or poker God?

http://www.pokerhand.org/?801105
Can you say "outplay" here? I was able to 3-bet my flush draw for a relative small amount and turned the flush. I didn't like the river -- a 4th club, so I checked, and sure enough I induced a moderate all-in. But I also started think:what hand that contains Kc would raise flop (AxKc) but not preflop? I concluded that opponent was bluffing, and I was right.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?801106
My original impression of this opponent was that he was quite good. Actually he's probably still decent, but not decent enough to lay down TP against my flopped set turned house.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?801107
Loose preflop call worked out well here. Opponent failed to lay down AA against my obvious trip Jacks.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?801124
Opponent called my massive flop reraise and then pushed a 33Q flop. I was putting him on AQ/KQ only so it was an easy call. Turned out he had 44 instead. Regardless, I was more than happy to take the money that he offered.

The bad -- bad beats, bluffs, semibluffs and lost races:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?802628
How weak-tight was my oppponent? He was scared about trip 7s and folded to my value-bet bluff on the river. He must be thinking I was calling him all the way with that flimsy top pair. Come on, I am bad but not that bad.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?802632
This opponent had gotten under my skin and caused me to lose my composure and call that preflop raise. Incidentally, I would have made the same flop push against any preflop raiser. It sucks to lose a race, but that's part of poker.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?801179
Biggest bad beat of the night -- Opponent runner-runnered a flush with the 9 of spades, destroying my red KK.. Sometimes poker is brutal.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?801181
Another lost race, this time with my favourite non-premium hand T8s. Sad sad sad. =(

http://www.pokerhand.org/?801204
Bluffing with AQ unimproved. I don't know whether I represented AK very well here -- I didn't bet turn only because my stack would be too small for me to effective bluff river. And a thinking opponent might ask why someone with trip Kings would give a free card to a flush draw on the turn. Regardless, my opponent certainly believed that I had a made hand. Or maybe he had nothing himself.. It surely helped that I was fairly new to the table.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?801205
Making two semibluffs. The 1st one was a check-raise with a flush draw + possible overcard out. Didn't hit it on the turn, but it gave me an open-ended straight draw as well. My turn all-in was enough to make noclue fold what he claimed was top pair.

And now, the ugly -- donkey pushes, crying calls, etc.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?802659
A failed bluff. Opponent refused to lay down his big pair. Bummer.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?801109
This is the aforementioned JJ vs AA preflop all-in.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?801182
Before this point I was running hot on this night, and here I thought I was going to get paid again. When all was set and done I found myself in a set-under-set situation and doubled up my opponent.

I found out that this opponent was absolutely terrible - he was calling every raise preflop and was readable like a book -- unfortunately I learned it the hard way. This set-over-set hand is nothing to be ashamed of, But later on I refused to believe him hitting a backdoor flush in another hand when I had a straight, and I paid him off almost fully. Just terrible play by me -- I wanted to kill myself for feeding him money that he otherwise wouldn't have earned.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?801183
Yes I win a nice pot here but I don't think this hand belongs to the "Good" section. I made a wild play against a wild donkish opponent -- reraising preflop with AJ. The flop had an Ace and I was check-raised all-in. Even though I could be in trouble against a bigger Ace, I'll probably had to stand up for myself -- why fold when I reraiseed preflop and hit my hand? I went ahead and called, fortunately enough to find that opponent had an even worse kicker!