…as long as you give me your chips later on. Haha. Today I reverted back to my “old school”-approach in the HU section. Small pot poker: try to look at a lot of flops cheap, play aggressively with monsters or sometimes slow play them…let the opponent come to you, especially if he/she likes to overbet.

One of the downsides of this approach is the time it takes to finish a match…it usually takes a lot more hands to get the job done, but the swings and junk-kicks aren’t as massive, which is one of the big upsides. It’s similar to Phil Hellmuth’s approach…let them run you over for some time…then stick it to them once a really big hand comes down. One thing’s for sure, it isn’t easy to laydown some of the borderline hands, but I decided to keep two things out of my mind/from getting between me and the W today:

1. Ego – well, if he’s bluffing me once, twice or xxx…who cares? Let him feel good, let him feel that he totally owns you. He’ll think different soon enough. On the same note, refrain from getting chatty, especially after beats. Let him enjoy…complaining and thinking about it just takes away your focus from the current hand…

2. Not sticking with reads: If the first “hunch” is to fold, then fold…(unless it’s a significant underbet…pay off to get the info unless it’s getting you into trouble chip-wise)

I managed to stick to that and I was rarely all-in preflop (only against a shorty with the best hand, twice). I suffered some of the nastier beats too, got my only Kings of the night busted by K3o…he had the Kc and called off his stack on the turn with one card to come…fourth club hit the river…nice call sir..not really, but what can you do. I came back to win the match…

So…the results today speak for themselves…5 matches…5 Ws…without many “good hands”…had AA once (won 60), KK (cracked by K3o) and 77 (held up against K10o)…apart from that I had AK, AJ, A10 once each…the rest were the perfect small pot hands (T9o, J9o, Q9o, 75o, etc) which are gold if your opponent hits TPNK, especially if you flop two pair or turn a straight…really sad to see how many opponents don’t know the first thing about poker and overbet their “monsters” all the time…on the other hand…how beautiful to see just that…at least if your hands hold up once they called off their stack… 🙂