Up Late Again

So once again, I stayed up until 1:00 AM last night playing hold'em on FullTilt and PokerStars. It was the usual 4 table setup - 2 tables on each site. At first I was holding steady at FullTilt but up pretty good on PokerStars. Then my FullTilt tables turned bad.

I was card dead - completely missing every flop when I raised pre-flop or getting no cards even worth seeing a flop. I usually follow up a pre-flop raise with a continuation bet on the flop and now I was getting check-raised pretty big on ugly boards so I had no choice but to fold.

After about an hour of doing well on PokerStars, my best table disintegrated. It usually starts when a couple of people decide to leave at the same time and within one round most everyone else leaves when it's time for the to post the BB.

So I was down to playing 3 tables and not doing well on any of them. The only consolation was that I did well at the other table that I just left so I wasn't down that much.

At this time I was also getting pretty pissed about the action I was getting. I was getting some pretty good hole cards - pocket Aces, Kings and Queens - but no one would call my pre-flop raises so I wasn't winning anything but the blinds. My strategy for entering a pot is to raise almost every time if I'm the first person in the pot and I will always raise the same amount. That way I do not give away the strength of my hand - I may have AA or I could have A4.

But it seemed like everyone knew when I had a big hand and they were folding or maybe I was just getting unlucky that no one else had a good enough hand when I did. Regardless of the reason, I decided to mix up my strategy.

The first time came when a guy in early position made a standard pre-flop raise. I had AA and just smooth called in middle position. I don't usually do this because it gives everyone else better pot odds to come in with things like suited connectors and AA doesn't play well in multi-way pots. After the flop, I made a minimum raise of his flop bet and he called. There were possible straight and flush draws on the flop so he probably believed I was drawing - which is what I wanted him to believe. He checked to me on the turn and I bet 1/2 pot. He check-raised me all-in and I was glad to call. He turned over TT and I won a nice pot. My pre-flop slow play seemed to work.

About 1 round later I had KK and just limped - very abnormal for me as I hate seeing an Ace come on the flop. Everyone else folded to the SB who made a decent size raise. I re-raised him to 3x his raise and he folded. This wasn't a huge pot but it was nice to get some action on my good starting hand for once even though it didn't even get to the flop.

Overall, I won a few bucks on the night but it was another frustrating night of few cards and little action. I'm starting to think about playing some smaller tourneys or at least some Sit-n-Gos just to get a change of pace.