Running with Spades

Current Bankroll: $0 - 1.1M Play Chips

So much for staying up. Picked up another session later this evening, and despite playing real solid through several tough hands I managed to run myself into a wall and bust out again in one hand:



Now I probably overplayed my AJo here, but up until my over-bet on the turn I actually think I played it pretty well. I was pretty confident my AJ was the best hand after I paired my ace on the flop so I attempted to set a trap by checking. After the raise I figured a reraise would tell me best where I was at because if he had hit a set he would push back pretty strong. He only called so I figured I could safely put him on an ace with a poor kicker because he would have folded with nothing and reraised with anything stronger.

My mistake was getting way too aggressive on the turn and trying to push him off his hand there. This was a bad play regardless of the outcome because I figure I've already got him beat so I should have been betting small to draw more money out of him rather than pushing him out of the pot. A large bet meant that he would fold any hand that I had beat and call only with a hand that would beat me. Considering I was putting him on weak ace, I should have considered the 4 kicker which gave him a straight. Unfortunately I played way too fast and didn't even see the straight possibility.

Of course it's easy to analyze this in hindsight and the straight is much more obvious now that it ever could have been during the hand, but regardless of what he ended up having, I think I should have played the turn much more slowly giving him a chance to push back if he had a strong hand. Never push with a medium hand to the point where only a better hand can call you. It's a lesson learned that I won't soon forget.

Now it's back to square one, building back up my play chip stack and taking on the freeroll. I just hope that I am learning enough from all these mistakes I'm making to keep improving my game so that I'll eventually get past the bust-out-zone. It's pretty frustrating to keep ending back up on the bottom regardless of how well I do for a period in between.

On the bright side, I finally found the poker hand replay site I had been looking for, so I'll be posting more hand replays in the future...