Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Cards Gone Bad

It’s been a long few weeks that all poker players will eventually have to go through if they play long enough. “You’re not getting any cards or luck”. It seems that everybody else on the table are getting good cards, with lots of action happening around you, raising and reraising of the pots, hands going to the river with good cards being shown down at the end. You can’t seem to even get two connectors, let alone two flush cards so suited and connected – forget it. As for pairs – you end it preying for even a pair of ducks…

You try to make some moves to win the blinds but with others catching cards, its hard to bluff and when you try to win a race you fail. It can be a very long tournament when this is happening and a long slow death can happen until you’re eventually all in with the best “card” you’ve seen all day – or basically what you hope will be any “two live cards”.

Not much you can do but ride it out and keep your fingers crossed that it will end sooner rather than later, but know it will eventually come to an end. Statistically this will happen to everybody at sometime.

In the past year this has happened to me on two occasions, December 2006 was a very bad month and left me in negative equity for that month. But after the New Year it changed and I was able to play some good poker and finish in the money on quite a few tournaments more than making up for the previous losses.

The next time it started at The Amateur Poker Players Tour (APAT) Scottish Championship in Edinburgh on 14 April. Somehow I managed to last six hours with no cards. Once I did get a pair, QQs on the BB. With five callers in the pot I took the option and raised my BB by 9x the blind. All five called the raise… !!!. Flop came A52, SB came out betting. Starting to get frustrated I reraised him (I was the original raiser, wanted to make sure he had hit that Ace, but with six people in the pot it was a bad move – one of them was sure to have an Ace and there were four people behind me still to act). The rest of the table folded and the SB reraised me all in. I had to reluctantly fold after a few minutes of dramatics. SB showed an A 5o, you know your luck is out when he hits two pair on the flop, with all the callers out there I don’t really know what he thought he was beating preflop. You just have to hold your head in your hands and bemoan the fact that it had to happen in a large tournament.

Finally, last Friday and Sunday (4th and 6th May), my luck turned and I started to get hands I could play some poker with and I started to hit some of the flops. Friday I finished 1st and Sunday 2nd. Only the weekly tournaments at our local Casino - not big championship games but not bad payouts and not only am I back into positive equity for the month I have a nice profit.

Just remember negative swings in luck do happen to every player. Try not to let it get to you and don’t ‘push’ trying to win your money back. You’re not the only player out there it’s happening too (just feels like it at the time). Eventually it will end and you will start to get your fair share of playable hands and good flops for your cards.

Luck is just statistics and it does even out eventually, so with good play and good management of your bankroll you will be able to ride the bad times and make up for it in the good times. Good play will always be a pay off.



Linda Iwaniak
UK Ladies Open Poker Champion

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the post Linz and the reminder that it does get better eventually.