Banging my chips against a brickwall.

Profit: $15

Ahhh, it's not that bad actually. The last week just hasn't been going as well as recent previous weeks.

I've just had a rather frustrating 700 hand session in which I won a buyin relatively quickly, only to spend the next three hours handing handing little bits back in missed draw and calling small pots on the river and losing. Nothing too damaging at all, I just felt as though there was little I could do. Then I had KK, raised, got called in one spot and then raised by a fairly loose player. Aces did come into my head but I pushed anyway. He didn't call immediatly which pleased me. With the timer running out he called a full stack with 66. A six peeled off on the turn. Nice.

They say that cash room sessions are often determined by your premium hands and today seemed to be the case. I lost another hand (about half a stack with KK) when the board was QXXX with three diamonds. I had the K diamond and pushed a short stack in for the rest of his chips (maybe $1.5 into a $4 pot) and he showed AQ diamonds - make a note of this, it's not often I get it in drawing dead, lol. AK also lost me some money as well.

I did, however, show good tilt control. After my KKs got sucked out I carried on playing and was even for those hands. I did have a hand which I raised with QQ (4x standard raise) and was put all in for $6. I simply decided to fold it not knowing anything about the player and deciding the only hand he could have that would make me happy was jacks.

After all this I was down $5 for the session. I would have been up $15 if my KKs would have held. I have to be delighted with this sort of outcome considering the beat and the fact I don't think I played that great.

Poker Grapher is saying that at one point I was up $46 this week so I'm obviously on a little bit of a slide at the moment. But at the same time I've played and made a bit on Carbon poker, which Poker Tracker doesn't track at all, and continued to build my bankroll on betfair, which Poker Tracker doesn't track very well. I've turned my Betfair account from $8 to $74 (in about three weeks) so far. Nice one.

Just one more story. I was playing a bit of live poker with my friend (not for money, just for a laugh) and we played a hand where the board read something like Q92Q6 (no flush). I can't quite remember how the betting had played out but my friend made a bet on the river and I said to him, "I know exactly what your hand is. It's A9."

I folded and he showed A9.

It's only really a minor thing but it was satisfying to note how I deconstructed the hand in my head and called his hand. I'm doing the same thing over and over again online so it just reinforces what I believe in myself. While I still think I have a lot to learn about player reads and agression, reading individual hands is something I excel at.