The Streak

I knew it couldn’t last forever. It was only a matter of time before I had to lose with pocket aces again. My streak was somewhere in the 60s. Over 60 times in a row, when I got AA, I won the hand. Sometimes I won the blinds, sometimes I won big pots, but they had just always been winning.

The first hand that broke the streak, and made Poker Tracker say I didn’t have a 100% win percentage, wasn’t actually a loss. I managed to get all in preflop against QQ. My opponent flopped a Q, and then the board ended up making a Q high straight. We chopped, and I still had yet to actually lose with my aces. That was yesterday.

Today, I got aces in the small blind at $100 NL. Everyone limped in, and I raised, but not enough to get rid of the powerhouse 73o in the big blind. Lucky for me, he was shortstacked. I put him all in with my $20 bet on the 456 flop, and someone else came along for the ride. When the big blind went all in, I knew my streak was coming to an end. I also knew the other guy who called didn’t have me beat, and I tried to get more money out of him on the turn, but he folded. I didn’t end up losing all that much on the hand, but my aces were still beat.

Update: Twice more. Once K4o called my raise and flopped trip kings. Didn’t end up costing me that much. Another time, a guy who had been pushing all in preflop (for about $28) did it again. Someone called in between the two of us, and I pushed for a little over $100. The other guy folded, and the maniac’s Q6s made his flush. Oh well.

The Run

My good run of cards, unlike my aces streak, seems to still be intact. Obviously, I can’t win every hand, but for the most part my good hands are holding up, my draws are hitting at what seems like the right frequency, and I’m not losing too much money when I’m beat. I had one session where I won one $120 pot, and several more around $30, and the most I ever lost on a hand was $7. Not every session was like this, and I’ve had several losing sessions lately, but they’re almost always coupled with another that’s a much bigger win.

Update: I wrote that yesterday… I’ve since gone on a pretty bad run, and dropped some of it back, but I’m still up 12BB/100 over 3000 hands at $100NL this weekend, and 17.5 BB/100 since the beginning of February, over the various NL games. Also cleared a $150 bonus and I’m more than halfway to an additional $200 Bonus.

Poker Tracker Guide

I was able to work out an acceptable DRM solution with Hdouble, and got my hands on a copy. It’s already helped me out a ton. I’ll post a real review once I get through it all (I only went to the sections I was immediately interested in: Review Your Play and Using the Auto-Rate Feature). The short review is: Get it. It’s good.

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