Low-Limit NLHE Action

Spent two hours playing on the Internet last night. It was a case of horrible and great. I was playing $.10-.25 NLHE. First table I was at I got creamed. It was one of those sessions where there was nothing you could do. I get pocket TT and bet, called. Flop comes 259 rainbow and I bet big, guy calling behind me. At the river he just calls and shows JJ and takes the pot. Then I have KK with a caller. Flop is 477. I bet and I’m called. I smell a fish so on the turn I check and the other guy bets $.25. A quarter? I call, still smelling fish. On the river he bets $.25 again. I call. He flips over 77 for quads. He could have cleaned me out!

That’s one thing about being an aggressive player, like me. If I raise pre-flop, I normally bet out post-flop. And even if I have part of a hand I’ll normally bet aggressively to define my hand. So when I’m in a pot it’s building.

When I miss my flop, I’ll bet to see where I’m at and I’ll steal several pots that way. The key is if I bet and someone stays with me I’m willing to chuck my hands. I’ve learned the hard way that running naked bluffs in NLHE is a losing roposition.

But since I do bet so much, even with some borderline positions, that people aren’t quite afraid of me. So when I flop a monster I can bet and get paid off. The best thing you can do is play the type of game that you hit quads, bet on the flop and people call you, or re-raise! That’s when you earn money.

Flopping quads and betting $.25 on the turn and the river is… why that guy is playing in Internet low-level hell… and why I’ll be promoted out of purgatory pretty soon.

So that was the way it went. If I flopped a straight someone rivered a bigger straight. If I got trips, someone had bigger trips. In twenty minutes of good cards/bad results I was down two buy-ins, $50 and I left the table, stewed a couple minutes to calm down, then rejoined another table.

There I did well over the next hour-and-a-half. By the end I was up $50 and even again, but it was a rollercoaster. It’s not the type of day I love, but you go through ones like it in the poker world.