Better never than late

For the most part I played well last night; however, I made a disastrous series of decisions on one hand which put me into a big hole I couldn't climb out of. The first bad decision was playing it at all! I was dealt A 8 offsuit. Obviously, an 8 is a weak kicker. I should have been disciplined enough to fold the hand before the flop; I wasn't. The flop came Td Ac 2s. My second bad decision was staying in the hand when it seemed clear that someone else also had an ace, and very likely had a better kicker. The turn was a 5, and the river was an 8. I certainly would have folded the hand if I hadn't hit for two pair on the river, but somehow I thought I'd actually caught up at the end. I lost to a better two pair; my opponent had been dealt A 10 offsuit. My stack took a huge hit; I dropped from $41k to $13K in one fell swoop. I didn't go on tilt, but my attempts to build my stack back up were hampered by not enough opponents remaining at the table, and by one of the remaining opponents playing notoriously slowly.

The poker lesson I learned tonight stands a popular aphorism on its head, and can be simply stated as "Better never than late". By this I mean it's better never to have backed a weak hand at all, than to have it improved on the river. Weak hands improved on the river lose more often than not.

delta: $-18,900
balance: $812,132