Fatal attraction

If you play long enough, you'll end up learning where your weaknesses are, and also where your blind spots are. One of the biggest weaknesses I've identified in my game so far is falling in love with two pair on the flop. By that I mean, when I'm dealt two different cards, and the flop matches both of them, with some third card which matches neither. The odds of winning such a hand are quite good. Not only that, your odds of winning a larger pot than normal are good, since your two pair is hidden -- no pair at all is showing on the board. Other players won't be scared off by a board like that, so you can slowly and stealthily build up the pot.

I also know what one of my biggest blind spots is -- not always realizing that there's a straight draw on the board. By that I don't mean four of the five cards to a straight, but three of them, and when they're not all contiguous.

The deadly thing about weaknesses and blind spots is that they bring out the best (i.e. the worst) in each other. I'm much more likely to be blind to a straight draw when I've fallen in love with my flopped two pair. That's what happened to me in the penultimate hand of my night. I had about $2,300 at the start of the hand, and about $410 at the end of it.

The cruel addendum was that the very next hand, the player whose straight beat my two pair got another straight (on the river, I believe; the hand before he flopped his straight) and took out my high pair (kings, I think). There was nothing in front of me but felt.

But as you know, I didn't replenish my stack. I just called it a night.

There are some real parallels between falling in love with a person and falling in love with a hand; both kinds of love cause you to be blinded in some way and to act irrationally. You have to be ready to dump a hand when the betting patterns of your opponents dictate it, no matter how much you love it. I didn't do that tonight, and it cost me. However, I'm not down about it; I just need to make sure I learn my lesson, so I'm less likely to make the same mistake again. If anything, lessons like this make me love poker more, not less!

delta: -$2,000
balance: $253,409