The SBP Archives - Your less than frequent dose of SBP!

My regular readers may have recalled my "notice" of playing the 2006 poker blogger championship a few weeks ago. I never bothered to update how I fared in said tournament because, quite simply, I did horribly.

There were about 2300 or so entrants and yours truly finished a miserable 1999th place. Oh yeah. Done before an hour was out. And the reason? I was on TILT!

Being on tilt is a poker term used for when things don't quite go your away, and you react in, let's just say, an unreasonable way. You end up doing things you don't normally do. Let's reveal what exactly happened.

There was a player at my table that always seemed to raise my blinds whenever they had the chance. Again and again, they kept on raising. It didn't help that the cards I held were absolute trash and were unplayable. But it seemed that they were raising me just because they could get away with it.

So I "loosened up" my starting requirements and called with hands that I don't normally do. I called with Ace-Five after being raised for the umpteenth time. I paired my aces on the flop. But the raiser just kept on calling my bets. On the river he made a big bet which I called after improving to two pair. Turns out though, he caught runner-runner to make his straight. I had enough!

Next time he raised my blind, I wasn't going to give him ANY cards. I looked down at Ace-Ten. I decided to put him all-in, "sending a message" that I couldn't be pushed around and hoping for a fold. He immediately called with his pocket 8s. He flopped a set and just like that, I was out.

What did I learn? Patience is indeed the key. I wasn't wrong in realzing he wasn't raising with absolute premiums hands like pockets Aces or Kings and it was ok to call with my lesser hands. However, this was a guy who when he bet, was going to play it out. No sense in trying to make him fold when he wasn't going to. He played aggressive and although he played much too loose for my tastes, he was convinced he had the best hand each time he entered the pot, or that he was going to catch the cards to necessary to make his best hand.

In the end, I needed to be patient. Good cards are coming, eventually. And with the blinds very low in relation to my stack, there wasn't a need to make a big move just yet. I had to bide my time a little, but didn't.

The blogger championship will have to wait one more year.