Four and out

I'm pretty sure I set a personal record tonight for poker futility. It only took me four hands to hit the felt! Those of you who are football fans will recognize the allusion in the title of this post to football futility. Despite my early exit, I don't think I played that badly. I happened to join a table with an aggressive front runner, and several other players with big stacks who were just as aggressive. When I joined, there were two other players with about $2,000, but they left the table after the first hand. That left my 2k stack battling it out with four bigger stacks, the largest of which was about 6k.

On my fourth and final hand of the night, I started with $1,600 and was dealt 7d Ad. There were a bunch of raises before the flop, all of which I called. The flop was 8c Ac 6h. Even with such a crappy kicker, I felt good about my pair of aces. I had a gut feeling I was the only one with them. So I hung in there, and eventually went all in. I lost to a pair of aces with a higher kicker (a 9). So the question is: should I have gone with my gut, or should I have jettisoned my aces because of my shitty kicker? I truly believe I did the right thing, which is why I don't feel bad. Poker is a game of instinct, and if you can't learn to cultivate and trust your poker instinct, you're playing the wrong game.

delta: -$2,000
balance: $286,743