Party Poker Blog

Online Poker Blogs and Baseball

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure
and the intelligent are full of doubt.
-- Bertrand Russell

The above quote can be attributed to both baseball & poker players. And fans.

A 5.10 texas hold em hand tonite:

A poor loose-aggressive player raises from middle position, one
cold-call (another loose, bad player), I call in BB with ATh.

Flop is 2-4-5 with one heart. I bet, preflop raiser raises,
cold-caller drops, I call. Turn is a 3, I check-raise, he folds.

Would anyone have played this differently?

This bad player is someone I have been following around and consequently logged a fair amount of time with.

An insidious threat to my "sound" online poker game is too much habitual play. Lately, I think I've been playing too much poker on auto-pilot without exercising much savvy judgement. I think some of my good, profitable plays have become too automatic and thusly, more readable.

Perhaps I'm over-thinking it. The fact that this poor, loose player laid a hand down to my check raise may mean many things. For all I know, he has notes on me saying, "Fold when this guy/girl check raises you," but more than likely he just didn't hit the flop and let it go. However, I'm still concerned that I'm getting too predictable for the regular Party Poker players.

If the turn had been a blank, or especially a heart, I still likely check-raise in a semi-bluff. I tend to get more aggressive and tricky, the higher the stakes. Low limits is all about ABC poker. I mean, it's important to appreciate how easy it is to cross the line attempting to push small edges, and to begin to play in what are actually losing situations. The better player you are the more edges you'll be able to find, many of them quite small, but there is a limit to this for every one of us. Moving past that limit into losing territory is a common, seductive and very costly mistake.

Lost $22 in 5.10 tonite. Was way up.