westside195025-year-old student from Croatia and a semi-pro poker player
Hello fellow mobsters, westside writing. Just like life has its ups and downs, same thing can be said for poker.
Last month ended with that really nice 600$ spin&go win I wrote about in my last blog post, but this month is a whole different story, for now.
First two days were pretty good actually - I managed to get almost 50€ profit.
But then the downswing started. Now, when I'm writing this - I'm breakeven for the last 7 days of playing.
A lots of things happened - a great deal of lost all-in situations with me being a huge favorite, some coolers with me being on the losing side... actually I didn't play bad at all, but what can you do?
As normal speed Heads-Up games are less variance affected then cash or tournament poker, the downswings aren't as brutal as for those cash game experts who can lose 10-15 buyins during a few sessions. But, it's still pretty frustrating when you play against some fishy player for 20-25 minutes, waiting for a good spot to push all your chips in and finally when that happens his 10% chance becomes enough to win the pot. And it keeps repeating...
I even delayed my transition to 7€ buy-in Heads-Ups until the next month, 'cause I didn't feel confident enough playing.
During the Easter weekend I traveled to my home town and one night went to a local poker club with a friend.
He is also a poker player - he was winning player on NL25 on PokerStars with a Platinum star VIP status and he decided to leave all that behind and quit online poker, just to play live games in that local club every night. Yes, players there are that bad!
I'm not such a big fan of cash games, but I decided to go there and give it a try one night.
So we went there and sat on the table with the bigest 6 maniacs I ever played poker with (and I played with a lot of maniacs!).
Blinds were 2HRK/2HRK (HRK=Croatian Kuna, 1€ = 7.5 HRK), so I used 300HRK to buy-in which is around 40€.
And what a game it was...
Everyone (except me and my friend) opened preflop for 7 to 10 BBs, everyone (exept me and friend, again) straddled whenever they could.
So standard hand was like: someone straddles to 4HRK, then someone opens to 25 HRK, gets a few callers. Flop comes out - someone bets 60... then either everyone else folds or they go all-in. Just sick.
In that kind of game you just need to be patient and wait for some good hands. I was card dead for 2 hours (during that time my friend made almost 500 HRK in just 2 pots with pocket queens and pocket jacks).
After 2 hours I finally got pocket kings and after someone opened to 12HRK (only 12!) I re-raised to 50.
The biggest donk on the table flat calls me from the big blind and the guy who opened surprisingly folded.
So the pot is already around 115 HRK, and I have less then 230 behind me.
Flop comes out 2 , 4 , 8 , I cbet around 60 HRK, and he pushes all-in! That move definitly seemed strong; but on this table full of maniacs this guy was the biggest one - he would definitly make this move with a lot of hands - I tought. Plus, I was obviously pot commited.
So I called and the guy showed me his pocket fours. He payed 50 just to see a flop (altough I had only around 280 HRK stack), and offcourse he flopped a set. No king on turn or river, naturally.
Oh well, what can you do? Somedays it just all goes wrong.
So today,after 10 long days I finally managed to get a nice,winning session, so I believe this downswing ended. Hopefully, long time will pass until it comes back again : )
Good luck guys,
hear from me soon;
yours westside.
