Adjusting To a Card Dead Session

[Aloysius]

I've been having a great run of cards recently, and have forgotten what it's like to go card dead. The poker gods quickly reminded me today. I play a NL Ring ($100 buy-in, 2/3 blinds) at my local B&M (Commerce Casino).

My table was very, very aggressive pre-flop (standard $15-$20 preflop raise) and loose overall. The few times I could limp and tried to steal post-flop, someone always came over the top and I had to let my hand go. This happened for about 5 hours, I won exactly 2 pots, finally leaving down my total buy-in. Also, because of the structure (buy-in only 33x the blind) I couldn't see many flops in a raised pot because a preflop call was such a large portion of my stack.

It's frustrating to think that at a loose-aggressive table, without the cards, in this structure, you can't win. Is this just a situation where you tell yourself, "this is not going to be a winning session because I'm not catching any cards" or are there strong strategies for combatting dead cards at this type of table?

Thanks in advance for any responses.

[ajizzle]

Yeah. Get good at reading players so that you can identify weak PF raises. Were there any times where you could push people off a hand PF by going over the top? That's how I would combat that. I would also make sure that the I had good enough of a read on the raiser to know that he was weak, and a good enough feel of the rest of the table, and good enough position to feel comfortable that no one would tag along behind you.

The only way to really beat these situations are to pick up hands, or to push back with your mediocre hands.

Ajizzle