Confessions of a Mediocre Poker Player

[Barry]

I beat the Party 15/30 game and have for over a year. I haven’t played in a 20/40 game for quite that I didn’t think that I was a pretty big favorite. (Well I guess you could exclude the time that both Tommy and Clarkmeister were at the same table.) I beat the Bellagio 30/60 game and while I don’t have enough time in 40/80, I am up and I haven’t felt as though I’m in over my head. Nonetheless, I am a mediocre poker player

Why?

Emotionally - For one, being a very competitive person results in the short-term still effect me. When I’m running good, life is good, when I’m not, its not. A few bad beats, a few monsters getting beat by even bigger monsters, or even making a good fold post-flop where I would have wound up winning the hand is enough to set me off of my game. I can stop, go for a walk, but sometimes I don’t and that’s bad. More than once after a session some respected posters here have made mention of my emotions surfacing more than they should. I have gotten better over time, but I still have a ways to go.

Technically - I make errors far too often, calling when I should raise and calling when I should fold are the most frequent, but I also make the other ones too. Looking at my PT stats and comparing them to good players, I find one striking difference between my stats and theirs. It is the post-flop aggression factor. Mine is about 1.5 where others are over 2.0 and in many cases well over 2.0. I have tried to figure out why. Here is at least part of the problem: when facing aggression on the turn when I have a decent, but not great hand, I don’t seem to have a good handle on whether I’m ahead and should raise or so far behind that I should fold, so far too many times I go into call down mode. When I should fold, it costs me 2 BB’s and I give up perhaps 1 BB when I should raise. I certainly need to get a better handle on this and narrow down the “call down” corridor.

Every now and again, I read Ray Zee’s essay on the stages of a poker player. Every time I start exploring the 3rd stage, I seem to get my head handed to me, so I tend to regress back to the early 2nd stage, and sometimes even back to the end of the 1st stage.

So anyway, I guess that I am going to start posting some of these turn decision hands and let you folks see where I am falling short. Also if any others of you have had similar issues getting into and through the 3rd stage, I‘d sure be glad to hear them.