Crappy High Cards

I've been looking back on my recent dry spells (not much bankroll movement in last 2 months) trying to figure out what the heck I am doing wrong. One thing that I noticed was that I played hands like KJs and KQo too often. So I am adding another rule to my No Limit Rule Book. A few months back, I started this out with the Number 1 rule: Fold Ax (When x is something other than another Ace or a King) when facing a raise.

This can be further extended to "Any two cards 9 and higher that do not match" I think I fell in love with hands like KTs and T9s, etc... I think it is ok to limp in with these in a family pot, but if you don't hit the flop hard, you should definitely let them go. Another key to hands like this, is to play them with position. Playing hands like this out of position can be a real killer. Ok, so you hit top pair with J9s. Now what? Your kicker sucks. Someone could have a billion other hands that have you beat.

Now at a 6 max NL table, I still like to play these hands in position when it is folded to me. These are the types of hands that I will attempt to steal blinds with when it is folded to me in the CO or on the Button.

Another thing that I am going to start to do more in the future is playing low suited connectors and suited one & two gappers. These type of hands are real easy to get away from if you don't hit the flop hard. Sure, you may flop one pair, but more than likely it still won't be the best hand out there. And if you do hit the flop hard with these hands, you can win some nice pots against people who can't let go of their overpairs/top pair top kicker hands. I've won some pretty nice pots the last couple days with 63s and 54s.

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Nothing too exciting has happened the last two days. I actually lost a few bucks each of the last two days, but nothing major. Probably down a total of $40. I haven't gotten involved in any big pots. The biggest pot I think was one where I pushed hard against a medium stack with Top pair 2nd kicker and 2nd nut flush draw. Dude had middle set on the flop and my flush didn't hit. The biggest pot I won was with Pocket Jacks where I flopped top set. I probably could have played this one a little better. What do you think?

It was a full ring table at 200NL. I had berated the table a little bit for playing like a fixed limit table. Lots of limping, lots of min-betting and min-raising. Most hands had at least 5 people see a flop. If I had a hand I wanted to play, I always raised 4x BB +1 BB per limper, and I won a lot of pots Pre-Flop that way. So I am in the SB with JJ and there are like 3-4 limpers. I raise it up to $12 (a little less than what I had been raising, considering that there were 3-4 limpers). Only person called. Flop came J43 rainbow. Pot was at about $33, and I led out and bet only a third of the pot. I didn't want to slowplay here because I figured that may look suspicious since I had raised PF. He called. The turn was another 3 giving me the boat. This time I checked, and he bet $15 (about $55 in the pot, so under a third pot bet). I probably should have raised here, but I ended up just calling. The River was a blank, and I led out $50 into the $85 pot. He folded. Maybe I should have checked here and gone for the check-raise? I would think a push here would be better then that $50 value bet. A push could look like a wiffed AK trying to buy the pot or something.

I'm still working on this PokerShare bonus. This is taking a little while longer than anticipated. Those FPPs don't rack up that fast. The rake has to reach $1.00 to get a full FPP (you do get partial FPPs for rakes between $0.25 and $0.99)

And the Nine Poker promotion through PokerSavvy is not finished yet because THERE WERE NO TABLE GOING HIGHER THAN $25NL THIS MORNING!! Arggg. There couldn't have been more than 30 people playing real money games there this morning. Oh well. I'll crank it out one of these nights.

Cheers!