re-thinking your strategy

[chopchoi]

5 left, Blinds 100/200. I'm the small stack, in the BB with 1,200 chips after posting (p-stars). SB has about 2,700 chips. I have been heads-up with him twice, and both times he tried to steal my blind with a min-raise. Once I defended, he bet out on the flop. I missed, so I mucked. The second time I had trash, so I let him take it down.

I'm dealt JTo, and as everyone starts folding I tell myself, "Time to put an end to his sh1t. If he tries to steal this time, I'm comming over the top." He raises to 600--not the min-raise I was expecting. But I had told myself I was going to take a stand, and when I tell myself I'm going to do something, I usually make a point of doing it, so I pushed back, and he knocked me out with AK.

I made afoolish mistake for two reasons: first, I should have known that once he raised it to 600, he wasn't going to fold for 800 more. Secondly, once he deviated from his normal course of action, I should have put him on a hand.

I think this is probably the biggest leak in my game. I try to plan my next move based on how I believe my opponent will act, but when his actions deviate slightly from what I anticipated, I fail to re-consider my plan in the context of the new information I have.

[BradleyT]

Well it was a lesson learned. However now you know that in the future if you ever play that person again, minraise = weak, 3xBB = strong when on the bubble.

[pooh74]

Good post...I think these kinds of things are really important to realize about ourselves. Its taken me a long time to stop doing what you described above and I still have to stop myself once in a while to reevaluate what I was thinking before the hand developed (off-course).

We get a timeclock...use it.

[Blarg]

Good post. I've done things a little like this myself, thinking about what someone could have or had before, almost like it was wish fulfillment, instead of focusing on what he most likely has, or what happens if I'm wrong. Holding a grudge or just an idea because it's the most appealing one to you is definitely a dangerous thing to do, and the punishment for it is well-deserved.

Kind of has a bite of irony too, being clever enough to get the hang of what someone's doing, only to turn around and after being one up on the situation and play the fool.