Variance

The downside to playing the way that I do is that variance crushes my soul. When you play very tightly and limit your starting hand selections, you never win a lot but you never lose a lot either. Your strategy involves getting paid off on big hands. The way that I play gets me into all sorts of messes that just aren't fun. Today, for instance, in a $2 HU I had 72o vs 99. The flop came 872. He bet, I raised, he moved in and I called. This is where variance gets me. Statistically I'm profitable putting in at this point. About 70% of the time my hand holds. However, 30% is a big number. The turn peeled 8 and I'm sunk to all but 4 outs. I'm buried deep in the heart of a string of this right now. This variance has also decided to team up with good old fashioned cold-decking to have its way with my bankroll. My other $2 HU loss came to KT vs my A9 on a flop of AQJ. Awesome. I did pull out 1 win by getting in for all of my money on A7dd against 5d5h on an 988 flop with 2 diamonds. When I hit an A on the river the guy called me a luckbox donkey. Fine.

I must also clarify my bankroll situation. Before my last post I snuck in a $.10/$.25 NLHE session at Bugsy's where things went my way. I scooped a monsterpotten with 55 vs QQ. I raised preflop in middle position and he slowplayed from the BB. The flop was 633. He checked, I bet, and he checkraised me the minimum. This made it easy for me. I know he's going to check the turn and I'm going to put out a bet around half the pot. If he has a monster, he'll smooth call, if he was just trying to weakly push me off my hand he'll fold. He smooth called my bet at the turn 4 and I was in shutdown mode unless a 2, 7, or 5 peeled. The 2 on the river sealed it for me and I didn't even have to do anything as he shoved into me. He was pretty pissed about dropping the hand but if he would've played it better he would've won a decent pot rather than lost the monster. A bigger raise on the flop, a raise or bet on the turn and I'm history. He got greedy and he got burned. I hope he doesn't learn from that mistake. Anyway, that put me up over $400 to something around $417 which is why I talked about my losing session even when the bankroll number increased between posts. Here are the new numbers.

Bugsy's: $387.24
FTP: $35.20