White Belt Poker

Took my first real beating tonight. Played for almost two hours at pokerroom.com at my usual $0.50-$1 limit. I was down $12 when I left. Table atmosphere was kind of unpleasant. Some guy called miroslav80 was telling people to fuck off when they beat him. He went from $32 down to zero, then put in another $10 and ended up at over $90 when I left. He had an unbelievable run of cards and seemed to be winning almost every hand – to the point where people were leaving. It almost looked suspicious.

As for my own play, I’m going to have to analyse it. The cards I had were poor, but I tightened up because of the maniacs to my left. I didn’t get a big pair all night, and even when I made an ace-high flush, it got beaten by a straight flush. I was pretty sanguine about it though. I didn’t tilt, which I was pleased about.

I’ve just looked through the stats of the session in Poker Stats and there’s not a great deal I could’ve done differently. Overall, I need to look at how I’m playing medium pairs (particularly in early position) as well as KJo, which seems to have got me into a lot of trouble.