Taking a step back and reevaluating your relative skill compared to the game is very different than a stop-loss. I think you should be playing with money you can afford to lose at all times such that you can make losing virtually painless to you; that doesn't mean you should blindly go ahead and lose it.

So what happens when someone decides they can afford to lose $200 and any more is non-painless?

I think you're just playing semantics at this point.

Arrrgh!

This won't be the usual topic that gets discussed on this forum, but it looks like the WEATHER is going to shorten or perhaps even cancel my trip!!!

I was planning to go to Winstar but the weathermen are predicting freezing rain shortly after midnight. ARGH!

Hate it when external forces *($#@(@# with my poker plans!!!

Hopefully the roads will be clear by tomorrow evening so I can at least get 3 days in. If not, FML I guess.

On an only somewhat related note, how realistic is the assumption that New Year's Eve is the single best night of the year to go play casino poker because no other night of the year will you find more people who just want to play so they can say they played or just want to try it once?

Or leave right now!

Day 1

I boarded a train called Positive Variance and took a 4 and a half hour journey that ended at a destination called a two-rack win. I decided to get off the train at that point because once the train got to the station at Up 3 Racks about 30 minutes prior, it picked up a new conductor named Mr. Tilt. Mr. Tilt took my train from Up 3 Racks to Up 2 Racks and I decided to get off the train before it got to Right Back Where You Fricking Started.

The table was frickin' awesome - I'd never seen anything like it in my limited live LHE career. UTG raises were getting 5 cold-callers. Villains were betting and raising the flop with TPNK like it was the nuts. 12+ big bet pots were getting all the way to showdown as 4th pair vs. ace high. Folding before the river was rare, even facing 2 big bets on the turn.

On the 3rd hand of the night I won a good pot when I 4-outered the nut straight against 2 villains that had both flopped 2 pair, and after that I was *never* down below my original buyin which is a nice stress relief.

A couple orbits later I built a big pot with kings full.

There was one hand I was particularly proud of myself for: I raised TT UTG and got 5 callers including both blinds. The flop came 953r. The SB, who had been betting 3 streets with second or third pair all night, donked. I knew she was capable of betting into 5 people with second pair so I was way ahead of her whole range. BB called and I raised. 2 more coldcallers, she called and BB called. The turn was an 8 putting 4 suits on the board. She donked again. BB called, and I just called. I knew I should have raised her but I was afraid this would be the one hand where she actually had something. The other villains folded. She donked the river (which was a Q), BB called, and I just called again. She flipped over 97, BB mucked and I dragged in a nice pot.

I think I left a LOT of money on the table. Those villains were betting and calling with a RIDICULOUS range of hands. I think I missed some flop raises and turn raises that would have been called and would have won me even bigger pots. They *weren't folding* once the pots got big (and they were almost always big - there were 2 or 3 villains that loved to straddle).

After 4 hours of watching the villains cold-call raises with 47o, flop 2 pair and drag a huge pot while I was folding trash hand after trash hand (which, quite frankly, I don't think the villains even noticed) I started to call really light hoping to nail something myself. I didn't. Then I had T2s in the BB, called a raise, flop came AT2r. One of the villains had AT and one had A2. That's when it was time for me to get up from the table. Previously I had a hand where I 3-bet KK before the flop and got cold-called for 2 bets by A3o which flopped a 245. I'm disappointed in myself for letting that tilt me (even after 4 hours) because I know better. I've been playing for 3 years, I know that variance is part of the game.

Going back to what I was saying about leaving money on the table, I also think I could have played a lot more hands from late position than I was playing. Of course I'm still going to fold trash like 94o or Q2o no matter what, but when they're betting and calling with 2nd and 3rd pair, the implied odds of any hand that can make top pair go way up. And I could have raised those in position before the flop to take control over the size of the pot. I wonder if this is what Bob148 had been trying to tell me as far as "taking the training wheels off my game" and playing my entire range vs. theirs.

Looking forward to a full night's sleep and going back down tomorrow night!

Thanks as always for everyone's help.

I think you should tighten your late position range probably. Sounds like a game where the button or blinds are frequently going to raise and you're going to flop a lot of hands you're going to have trouble playing (middle pair, gut shots, etc.) after the flop. You're describing a loose-aggressive game; you don't really want to start playing weak hands just because they are. You're talking about folding 94o and Q2o but I'd be snap folding J4s for one bet OTB too.

Sounds like the perfect kind of 4/8 game to play in; maniacal enough to where a good starting hand selection would be enough to beat the rake. Of course, it'll be hard to play optimally with a stop loss of 25 bets in a game like this; I've dusted off 25 bets in under an hour multiple times over the past year. Since you ran well (I assume you're playing w/ $2 chips, so a 2 rack win = 50 bets), maybe push up your stop loss to $400 for today's session?

Congrats on the win DTXCF. Just remember to raise turn w/ your TT next time .

It was $1 chips. And thanks for the congrats . It felt good to get up from the table with significantly more than I sat down with! I want more of that now .

Thanks TDK for your advice as well. And thanks to everyone - callypgian, lawdude, DougL, Bob148, Zeke Ferrari, BigBadBabar, nyrugby - I know I'm forgetting a few so don't feel hurt if you've helped me and I didn't say your name.

I'll let everyone know how it goes tonight - I hope the table is just as juicy again!

I needed to hear this. Yes, it tilts me when my AK raise gets coldcalled by 96o and the flop comes A66, but it also tilts me when I fold J6s for one bet on the button, two more of my suit come on the flop, a third comes on the river and a villain drags a 15-big-bet pot with two pair. Or when I fold 42o on the button for one bet, two fours come on the flop and TPNK drags a 10-big-bet pot. It's discouraging that these things still affect me, I should know better by now, but after 4 hours of sitting and watching that while I'm folding 7 hands per orbit? Wow.

What I've always told myself is that I have exactly the same probability of flopping trips with AK or KQ that I have with 97 or 42, and AK and KQ have the *added* benefit of having a good chance to win the pot by spiking a pair. They're also both far less likely to make an expensive second-best hand (or third-best hand as the case was when I played T2s!!!). So I need to resist the urge to play trash just because the villains are winning with it, even for one bet on the button!

I also find that the more laggy a game is the more hands I start open-folding in early position -- hands like: AJ, AT, KQ, KJ, sometimes AQ (all off suit). And coming in with QJ and JT (off) is never part of my EP strategy in a full game.

Sweet, post the details for tonite as well.

The good news is I had another 2-rack win. The bad news is a better player probably would have won 4 or 5.

I ran INSANELY good - I couldn't miss a flop with a raised premium hand preflop, every draw I had odds to chase came in, when I had the made hand it held up. Obviously I'm exaggerating but it really felt like I was just catching, catching, catching. I *was* up 4 racks at one point. I think what happened is I started feeling invincible and started playing starting hands I shouldn't, feeling like I was "on a roll" and "was going to catch everything". I realized what was going on after losing an entire rack, then calmed down, took some standard, correctly-played bad beats and decided to get up from the table still up 2 racks (I need the psychological boost of actually having won). The session lasted 7 hours anyway (my longest ever by far) and I'd had enough fun.

I'm probably *not* going to play tomorrow night (long boring story that I'll spare everyone).

I *always* appreciate everyone's help and advice. Thanks.

I think calli meant that buying four racks is correlated with being less awful than normal

Colts fan - it's helpful to be realistic with yourself, so if you're losing because you're playing sub optimally it's good to know that -- but sometimes you lose playing well even if you start out hot. It's the natural fluctuations of the game (and why limiting oneself to -$200 is kind of absurd).

Btw what you've described is less of a marathon than I ran every week as a pro. Like. Much less

Imo marathon session = 12+ hours

One guy in my game will, no joke, not leave the table for 3+ days.

No rules preventing that? Bay101 kicks you out after 20 hours in a row. But only for 4 hours then you can come back.

Well he did put marathon in quotes. I've seen a couple people go over 4 days. My record is about 3 days and half the people at that table had me beat.

I think that's a California law (anyone want to correct me?). Connecticut has no such law. Foxwoods did house the world record holder for longest session ever, before Phil Laak went ahead and broke it.

It's a San Jose city law. San Jose has probably the most rules of any cardrooms I've been to.

Yea definitely a San Jose city law, I believe you can't play NL their either, has to be Spread limit.

They changed that a few years ago. At the same time this law went in I believe

Had a six-hour session tonight where I broke even. Over the six hours my stack fluctuated from 200 to 100 to 300 to 100 to 200. I got up because the weather report said freezing rain was coming - *&$(&#@ weather screwing up my poker plans! It really irked me because 2 bad players had just sat down at the table.

There was one particular observation I had from all 3 of my sessions in the year 2015 that I wanted to share and discuss if possible:

1. How little fear some villains have of the board!

When I flop top 2 on an AT9 MONOTONE flop in a raised 5 way pot, c-bet and get raised I think I'm dead meat. But then when an 8 comes on the turn (4th of the suit) and a DIFFERENT villain DONKS into the flop raiser I REALLY think I'm dead meat and don't bother putting any more chips in the pot. When that hand got to showdown one villain had AK and the other had 89. I'd have won it! All I could do was stare at it with open-mouthed horror.

Another example: I got to see a free flop from the BB with 72s, flopped a flush draw, SB bet, I called, MP called. The turn gave me a baby flush but paired the board. SB bet, I called, MP raised, SB muttered about how he walked into that and called, I folded. All MP had was trips. Again, open-mouthed horror!

In the first hand, I think there were 12 big bets in the pot when the action got to me. To show down my hand I'm probably going to have to put 2 more big bets in the pot, *maybe* 3 (the table was pretty passive so a flop raise doesn't mean a turn raise is coming). The other 2 villains are each going to put 2 maybe 3 bets in the pot too, so if my math is correct at that point I'm going to have to invest 2 or 3 big bets for a chance to win a 16 or 18 big bet pot. Am I going to be good there 1 time in 6 or 1 time in 8? I don't want to become a calling station just because a couple illogical hands got played.

In the second hand the pot was much smaller - I think it was a 5-way limped pot with only 3 of us seeing the turn so I guess there were about 9 big bets in the pot when the action got back around to me after MP's raise. Most likely I'm going to be putting in 2 more big bets to win 11. Is a baby flush going to be good on a paired board facing that kind of action more than 1 time in 5.5?

I guess I'm trying to figure out if I made the right *decisions* on those hands and how I should play in similar situations in the future.